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CHARLES  DICKENS 


I  A  CRITICAL  STUDY 


BY 

Go    K.   CHESTERTON 

h      ■  Author  of  Varied  Types,   Heretics,  Etc. 


NEW  YORK 

DODD    MEAD  &  COMPANY 

1911 


^  5^.1 


C- 


COPYRIGHT,    1906,    BY 
DODD,  MEAD  &  COMPANY 

First  Edition  Published  in  September^  igO^ 


RHODA   BASTABLE 


255991 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

rAGB 

THE  DICKENS  PERIOD I 

CHAPTER  II 
THE  BOYHOOD  OF  DICKENS 14 

CHAPTER  III 
THE  YOUTH  OF  DICKENS 43 

CHAPTER  IV 
*'THE  PICKWICK  PAPERS" 7I 

CHAPTER  V 
THE  GREAT  POPULARITY lOO 

CHAPTER  VI 
DICKENS  AND  AMERICA  .         .         .         .         .          .      I27 

CHAPTER    VII 

DICKENS  AND  CHRISTMAS '    -      '55 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER  VIII 

PAGE 

THE  TIME  OF  TRANSITION l8l 

CHAPTER  IX 
LATER  LIFE  AND  WORKS        .         .         .  .         .211 

CHAPTER  X 
THE  GREAT  DICKENS  CHARACTERS      ....      244 

CHAPTER  XI 
ON  THE  ALLEGED  OPTIMISM  OF    DICKENS  .         .      266 

CHAPTER  XII 
A  NOTE  ON  THE  FUTURE  OF  DICKENS         .         ,         .      29I 


CHAPTER    I 
THE  DICKENS  PERIOD 

Much  of  our  modern  difficulty,  In  religion  and 
other  things,  arises  merely  from  this,  that  we 
confuse  the  word  "  indefinable  "  with  the  word 
"  vague."  If  some  one  speaks  of  a  spiritual  fact 
as  "  Indefinable  "  we  promptly  picture  something 
misty,  a  cloud  with  Indeterminate  edges.  But  this 
is  an  error  even  in  common-place  logic.  The 
thing  that  cannot  be  defined  is  the  first  thing;  the 
primary  fact.  It  is  our  arms  and  legs,  our  pots 
and  pans,  that  are  indefinable.  The  Indefinable 
is  the  Indisputable.  The  man  next  door  is  Inde- 
finable, because  he  is  too  actual  to  be  defined. 
And  there  are  some  to  whom  spiritual  things  have 
the  same  fierce  and  practical  proximity;  some  to 
whom  God  is  too  actual  to  be  defined. 

But  there  is  a  third  class  of  primary  terms. 
There  are  popular  expressions  which  every  one 
uses  and  no  one  can  explain;  which  the  wise  man 
will  accept  and  reverence,  as  he  reverences  desire 
cr  darkness  or  any  elemental  thing.  The  prigs 
of  the  debating  club  will  demand  that  he  should 


i/.i.'.";    CHARLES    DICKENS 

define  his  terms.  And  being  a  wise  man  he  will 
flatly  refuse.  This  first  Inexplicable  term  is  the 
most  Important  term  of  all.  The  word  that  has 
no  definition  Is  the  word  that  has  no  substitute.  If 
a  man  falls  back  again  and  again  on  some  such 
word  as  "  vulgar  "  or  "  manly  "  do  not  suppose 
that  the  word  means  nothing  because  he  cannot 
say  what  it  means.  If  he  could  say  what  the  word 
means  he  would  say  what  it  means  instead  of 
saying  the  word.  When  the  Game  Chicken  (that 
fine  thinker)  kept  on  saying  to  Mr.  Toots,  "  It's 
mean.  That's  what  it  Is — It's  mean,"  he  was 
using  language  In  the  wisest  possible  way.  For 
what  else  could  he  say?  There  Is  no  word  for 
mean  except  mean.  A  man  must  be  very  mean 
himself  before  he  comes  to  defining  meanness. 
Precisely  because  the  word  Is  Indefinable,  the  word 
is  indispensable. 

In  everyday  talk,  or  In  any  of  our  journals,  we 
may  find  the  loose  but  Important  phrase,  "  Why 
have  we  no  great  men  to-day?  Why  have  we 
no  great  men  like  Thackeray,  or  Carlyle,  or 
Dickens?  "  Do  not  let  us  dismiss  this  expression, 
because  It  appears  loose  or  arbitrary.  "  Great " 
does  mean  something,  and  the  test  of  Its  actuality 
Is  to  be  found  by  noting  how  Instinctively  and 
decisively  we  do  apply  It  to  some  men  and  not  lo 

2 


THE    DICKENS    PERIOD 

others;  above  all  how  instinctively  and  decisively 
we  do  apply  it  to  four  or  five  men  in  the  Victorian 
era,  four  or  five  men  of  whom  Dickens  was  not 
the  least.  The  term  is  found  to  fit  a  definite  thing. 
Whatever  the  word  "  great  "  means,  Dickens  was 
what  it  means.  Even  the  fastidious  and  unhappy 
who  cannot  read  his  books  without  a  continuous 
critical  exasperation,  would  use  the  word  of  him 
without  stopping  to  think.  They  feel  that  Dickens 
is  a  great  writer  even  if  he  is  not  a  good  writer. 
He  is  treated  as  a  classic;  that  is,  as  a  king  who 
may  now  be  deserted,  but  who  cannot  now  be 
dethroned.  The  atmosphere  of  this  word  clings 
to  him;  and  the  curious  thing  Is  that  we  cannot 
get  It  to  cling  to  any  of  the  men  of  our  own 
generation.  "  Great  "  Is  the  first  adjective  which 
the  most  supercilious  modern  critic  would  apply 
to  Dickens.  And  "  great "  Is  the  last  adjective 
that  the  most  supercilious  modern  critic  would 
apply  to  himself.  We  dare  not  claim  to  be  great 
men,  even  when  we  claim  to  be  superior  to  them. 
Is  there,  then,  any  vital  meaning  in  this  idea  of 
"  greatness ''  or  in  our  laments  over  its  absence  In 
our  own  time?  Some  people  say,  indeed,  that 
this  sense  of  mass  is  but  a  mirage  of  distance,  and 
that  men  always  think  dead  men  great  and  live 
men  small.     They  seem  to  think  that  the  law  of 

3 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

perspective  In  the  mental  world  is  the  precise  oppo- 
site to  the  law  of  perspective  In  the  physical  world. 
They  think  that  figures  grow  larger  as  they  walk 
away.  But  this  theory  cannot  be  made  to  corre- 
spond with  the  facts.  We  do  not  lack  great  men 
in  our  own  day  because  we  decline  to  look  for 
them  in  our  own  day;  on  the  contrary,  we  are 
looking  for  them  all  day  long.  We  are  not,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  mere  examples  of  those  who  stone 
the  prophets  and  leave  It  to  their  posterity  to 
build  their  sepulchres.  If  the  world  would  only 
produce  our  perfect  prophet,  solemn,  searching, 
universal,  nothing  would  give  us  keener  pleasure 
than  to  build  his  sepulchre.  In  our  eagerness  we 
might  even  bury  him  alive.  Nor  is  it  true  that 
the  great  men  of  the  Victorian  era  were  not  called 
great  in  their  own  time.  By  many  they  were 
called  great  from  the  first.  Charlotte  Bronte 
held  this  heroic  language  about  Thackeray.  Rus- 
kin  held  It  about  Carlyle.  A  definite  school  re- 
garded Dickens  as  a  great  man  from  the  first  days 
of  his  fame:  Dickens  certainly  belonged  to  this 
school. 

In  reply  to  this  question,  "  Why  have  we  no 
great  men  to-day?'*  many  modern  explanations 
are  offered.  Advertisement,  cigarette-smoking, 
the  decay  of  religion,  the  decay  of  agriculture,  too 

4 


THE    DICKENS     PERIOD 

much  humanitarlanism,  too  little  humanitarlanism, 
the  fact  that  people  are  educated  insufficiently,  the 
fact  that  they  are  educated  at  all,  all  these  are 
reasons  given.  If  I  give  my  own  explanation,  it 
is  not  for  its  intrinsic  value;  It  is  because  my  an- 
swer to  the  question,  "  Why  have  we  no  great 
men?  "  Is  a  short  way  of  stating  the  deepest  and 
most  catastrophic  difference  between  the  age  in 
which  we  live  and  the  early  nineteenth  century; 
the  age  under  the  shadow  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, the  age  In  which  Dickens  was  born. 

The  soundest  of  the  Dickens  critics,  a  man  of 
genius,  Mr.  George  GIssIng,  opens  his  criticism  by 
remarking  that  the  world  in  which  Dickens  grew 
up  was  a  hard  and  cruel  world.  He  notes  Its  gross 
feeding,  its  fierce  sports,  its  fighting  and  foul 
humour,  and  all  this  he  summarizes  in  the  words 
hard  and  cruel.  It  is  curious  how  different  are  the 
impressions  of  men.  To  me  this  old  English 
world  seems  infinitely  less  hard  and  cruel  than  the 
world  described  in  Gisslng's  own  novels.  Coarse 
external  customs  are  merely  relative,  and  easily 
assimilated.  A  man  soon  learnt  to  harden  his 
hands  and  harden  his  head.  Faced  with  the  world 
of  GIssing,  he  can  do  little  but  harden  his  heart. 
But  the  fundamental  difference  between  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century  and  the  end  of  It 

S 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

IS  a  difference  simple  but  enormous.  The  first 
period  was  full  of  evil  things^  but  it  was  full  of 
hope.  The  second  period,  the  pn  de  siecle,  was 
even  full  (in  some  sense)  of  good  things.  But 
It  was  occupied  in  asking  what  was  the  good  of 
good  things.  Joy  itself  became  joyless;  and  the 
fighting  of  Cobbett  was  happier  than  the  feasting 
of  Walter  Pater.  The  men  of  Cobbett's  day  were 
sturdy  enough  to  endure  and  inflict  brutality;  but 
they  were  also  sturdy  enough  to  alter  it.  This 
"  hard  and  cruel  "  age  was,  after  all,  the  age  of  re- 
form. The  gibbet  stood  up  black  above  them; 
but  It  was  black  against  the  dawn. 

This  dawn,  against  which  the  gibbet  and  all  the 
old  cruelties  stood  out  so  black  and  clear,  was  the 
developing  Idea  of  liberalism,  the  French  Revo- 
lution. It  was  a  clear  and  a  happy  philosophy. 
And  only  against  such  philosophies  do  evils  appear 
evident  at  all.  The  optimist  is  a  better  reformer 
than  the  pessimist;  and  the  man  who  believes  life 
to  be  excellent  is  the  man  who  alters  it  most.  It 
seems  a  paradox,  yet  the  reason  of  it  is  very  plain. 
The  pessimist  can  be  enraged  at  evil.  But  only 
the  optimist  can  be  surprised  at  it.  Froni_tbe 
reformer  is  required  a  simplicity  of  surprise.  He 
must  have  the  faculty  of  a  violent  and  virgin 
astonishment.     It  is  not  enough  that  he  should 

6 


THE    DICKENS    PERIOD 

think  injustice  distressing;  he  must  think  injustice 
absurd,  an  anomaly  in  existence,  a  matter  less  for 
tears  than  for  a  shattering  laughter.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  pessimists  at  the  end  of  the  century 
could  hardly  curse  even  the  blackest  thing;  for 
they  could  hardly  see  it  against  its  black  and  eter- 
nal background.  Nothing  was  bad,  because  every- 
thing was  bad.  Life  in  prison  was  infamous — 
like  life  anywhere  else.  The  fires  of  persecution 
were  vile — like  the  stars.  We  perpetually  find 
this  paradox  of  a  contented  discontent.  Dr.  John- 
son takes  too  sad  a  view  of  humanity,  but  he  is 
also  too  satisfied  a  Conservative.  Rousseau  takes 
too  rosy  a  view  of  humanity,  but  he  causes  a  revo- 
lution. Swift  is  angry,  but  a  Tory.  Shelley  is 
happy,  and  a  rebel.  Dickens,  the  optimist,  sati- 
rizes the  Fleet,  and  the  Fleet  is  gone.  Gissing, 
the  pessimist,  satirizes  Suburbia,  and  Suburbia  re- 
mains. 

Mr.  Gissing's  error,  then,  about  the  early  Dick- 
ens period  we  may  put  thus:  in  calling  it  hard 
and  cruel  he  omits  the  wind  of  hope  and  humanity 
that  was  blowing  through  it.  It  may  have  been 
full  of  inhuman  institutions,  but  it  was  full  of 
humanitarian  people.  And  this  huipanitarianism 
was  very  much  the  better  (in  my  view)  because  it 
was  a  rough  and  even  rowdy  humanitarianism. 

7 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

It  was  free  from  all  the  faults  that  cling  to  the 
name.  It  was,  If  you  will,  a  coarse  humanltarlan- 
Ism.  It  was  a  shouting,  fighting,  drinking  philan- 
thropy— a  noble  thing.  But,  In  any  case,  this 
atmosphere  was  the  atmosphere  of  the  Revolution; 
and  Its  main  Idea  was  the  Idea  of  human  equality. 
I  am  not  concerned  here  to  defend  the  egalitarian 
idea  against  the  solemn  and  babyish  attacks  made 
upon  It  by  the  rich  and  learned  of  to-day.  I  am 
merely  concerned  to  state  one  of  Its  practical  con- 
sequences. One  of  the  actual  and  certain  conse- 
quences of  the  Idea  that  all  men  are  equal  Is  Imme- 
diately to  produce  very  great  men.  I  would  say 
superior  men,  only  that  the  hero  thinks  of  him- 
self as  great,  but  not  as  superior.  This  has  been 
hidden  from  us  of  late  by  a  foolish  worship  of 
sinister  and  exceptional  men,  men  without  com- 
radeship, or  any  Infectious  virtue.  This  type  of 
C^sar  does  exist.  There  is  a  great  man  who 
makes  every  man  feel  small.  But  the  real  great 
man  is  the  man  who  makes  every  man  feel  great. 

The,  <;pinf-  nf  the  pajJyL-canfnry  prnr\ucpr\  great 

men,  because  it  believed  that  men  were  great.  It 
made  strong  men  by  encouraging  weak  men.  Its 
education,  its  public  habits.  Its  rhetoric,  were  all 
addressed  towards  encouraging  the  greatness  In 
everybody.     And  by  encouraging  the  greatness  In 

8 


THE    DICKENS    PERIOD 

everybody,  it  naturally  encouraged  superlative 
greatness  In  some.  Superiority  came  out  of  the 
high  rapture  of  equality.  It  Is  precisely  In  this 
sort  of  passionate  unconsciousness  and  bewildering 
community  of  thought  that  men  do  become  more 
than  themselves.  .  No  man  by  taking  thought  can 
add  one  cubit  to  his  stature;  but  a  man  may  add 
many  cubits  to  his  stature  by  not  taking  thought. 
The  best  men  of  the  Revolution  were  simply  com- 
mon men  at  their  best.  This  Is  why  our  age  can 
never  understand  Napoleon.  Because  he  was 
something  great  and  triumphant,  we  suppose  that 
he  must  have  been  something  extraordinary,  some- 
thing Inhuman.  Some  say  he  was  the  Devil;  some 
say  he  was  the  Superhuman.  Was  he  a  very,  very 
bad  man?  Was  he  a  good  man  with  some  greater 
moral  code  ?  We  strive  In  vain  to  Invent  the  mys- 
teries behind  that  Immortal  mask  of  brass.  The 
modern  world  with  all  Its  subtleness  will  never 
guess  his  strange  secret ;  for  his  strange  secret  was 
that  he  was  very  like  other  people. 

And  almost  without  exception  all  the  great  men 
have  come  out  of  this  atmosphere  of  equality. 
Great  men  may  make  despotisms ;  but  democracies 
make  great  men.  The  other  main  factory  of  heroes 
besides  a  revolution  Is  a  religion.  And  a  religion 
again,  is  a  thing  which,  by  its  nature,  does  not 

9 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

think  of  men  as  more  or  less  valuable,  but  of  men 
as  all  Intensely  and  painfully  valuable,  a  democracy 
of  eternal  danger.  For  religion  all  men  are  equal, 
as  all  pennies  are  equal,  because  the  only  value 
In  any  of  them  Is  that  they  bear  the  Image  of  the 
King.  This  fact  has  been  quite  Insufficiently 
observed  In  the  study  of  religious  heroes.  Piety 
produces  Intellectual  greatness  precisely  because 
piety  In  Itself  Is  quite  Indifferent  to  Intellectual 
greatness.  The  strength  of  Cromwell  was  that 
he  cared  for  religion.  But  the  strength  of  religion 
was  that  It  did  not  care  for  Cromwell ;  did  not  care 
for  him,  that  Is,  any  more  than,  for  anybody  else. 
He  and  his  footman  were  equally  welcomed  to 
warm  places  In  the  hospitality  of  hell.  It  has 
often  been  said,  very  truly,  that  religion  is  the 
thing  that  makes  the  ordinary  man  feel  extraor- 
dinary; it  is  an  equally  Important  truth  that  re- 
ligion is  the  thing  that  makes  the  extraordinary 
man  feel  ordinary. 

Carlyle  killed  the  heroes;  there  have  been  none 
since  his  time.  He  killed  the  heroic  (which  he 
sincerely  loved)  by  forcing  upon  each  man  this 
question:  "Am  I  strong  or  weak?"  To  which 
the  answer  from  any  honest  man  whatever  (yes, 
from  Caesar  or  Bismarck)  would  certainly  be 
"  weak."     He  asked  for  candidates  for  a  definite 

10 


THE    DICKENS    PERIOD 

aristocracy,  for  men  who  should  hold  themselves 
consciously  above  their  fellows.  He  advertised 
for  them,  so  to  speak;  he  promised  them  glory; 
he  promised  them  omnipotence.  They  have  not 
appeared  yet.  They  never  will.  For  the  real 
heroes  of  whom  he  wrote  had  appeared  out  of  an 
ecstacy  of  the  ordinary.  I  have  already  Instanced 
such  a  case  as  Cromwell.  But  there  Is  no  need  to 
go  through  all  the  great  men  of  Carlyle.  Carlyle 
himself  was  as  great  as  any  of  them;  and  If  ever 
there  was  a  typical  child  of  the  French  Revolution, 
It  was  he.  He  began  with  the  wildest  hopes  from 
the  Reform  Bill,  and  although  he  soured  after- 
wards, he  had  been  made  and  moulded  by  those 
hopes.  He  was  disappointed  with  Equality;  but 
Equality  was  not  disappointed  with  him.  Equality 
IS  justified  of  all  her  children. 

But  we,  in  the  post-Carlylean  period,  have 
become  fastidious  about  great  men.  Every  man 
examines  himself,  every  man  examines  his  neigh- 
bours, to  see  whether  they  or  he  quite  come  up 
to  the  exact  line  of  greatness.  The  answer  is, 
naturally,  "  No."  And  many  a  man  calls  himself 
contentedly  "  a  minor  poet  "  who  would  then  have 
been  Inspired  to  be  a  major  prophet.  We  are  hard 
to  please  and  of  little  faith.  We  can  hardly  be- 
lieve that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  great  man. 

II 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

They  could  hardly  believe  there  was  such  a  thing 
as  a  small  one.  But  we  are  always  praying  that 
our  eyes  may  behold  greatness,  Instead  of  praying 
that  our  hearts  may  be  filled  with  It.  Thus,  for 
Instance,  the  Liberal  party  (to  which  I  belong) 
was,  In  Its  period  of  exile,  always  saying,  "  O  for 
a  Gladstone !  '*  and  such  things.  We  were  always 
asking  that  It  might  be  strengthened  from  above, 
Instead  of  ourselves  strengthening  It  from  below, 
with  our  hope  and  our  anger  and  our  youth. 
Every  man  was  waiting  for  a  leader.  Every  man 
ought  to  be  waiting  for  a  chance  to  lead.  If  a 
god  does  come  upon  the  earth,  he  will  descend  at 
the  sight  of  the  brave.  Our  protestations  and  lit- 
anies are  of  no  avail ;  our  new  moons  and  our  sab- 
baths are  an  abomination.  The  great  man  will 
come  when  all  of  us  are  feeling  great,  not  when 
all  of  us  are  feeling  small.  He  will  ride  In  at  some 
splendid  moment  when  we  all  feel  that  we  could 
do  without  him. 

We  are  then  able  to  answer  in  some  manner 
the  question,  "Why  have  we  no  great  men?" 
We  have  no  great  men  chiefly  because  we  are  al- 
ways looking  for  them.  We  are  connoisseurs  of 
greatness,  and  connoisseurs  can  never  be  great; 
we  are  fastidious,  that  is,  we  are  small.  When 
Diogenes  went  about  with  a  lantern  looking  for 

12 


THE    DICKENS     PERIOD 

an  honest  man,  I  am  afraid  he  had  very  little  time 
to  be  honest  himself.  And  when  anybody  goes 
about  on  his  hands  and  knees  looking  for  a  great 
man  to  worship,  he  is  making  sure  that  one  man 
at  any  rate  shall  not  be  great.  Now,  the  error  of 
Diogenes  Is  evident.  The  error  of  Diogenes  lay 
in  the  fact  that  he  omitted  to  notice  that  every  man 
IS  both  an  honest  man  and  a  dishonest  man. 
Diogenes  looked  for  his  honest  man  inside  every 
crypt  and  cavern ;  but  he  never  thought  of  looking 
inside  the  thief.  And  that  is  where  the  Founder 
of  Christianity  found  the  honest  man;  He  found 
him  on  a  gibbet  and  promised  him  Paradise.  Just 
as  Christianity  looked  for  the  honest  man  inside 
the  thief,  democracy  looked  for  the  wise  man 
inside  the  fool.  It  encouraged  the  fool  to  be 
wise.  We  can  call  this  thing  sometimes  optimism, 
sometimes  equality;  the  nearest  name  for  it  is  en- 
couragement. It  had  its  exaggerations — failure  to 
understand  original  sin,  notions  that  education 
would  make  all  men  good,  the  childlike  yet  pedan- 
tic philosophies  of  human  perfectibility.  But  the 
whole  was  full  of  a  faith  in  the  infinity  of  human 
souls,  which  is  in  Itself  not  only  Christian  but 
orthodox;  and  this  we  have  lost  amid  the  limita- 
tions of  a  pessimistic  science.  Christianity  said 
that  any  man  could  be  a  saint  if  he  chose;  democ- 

13 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

racy,  that  any  man  could  be  a  citizen  if  he  chose. 
The  note  of  the  last  few  decades  in  art  and  ethics 
has  been  that  a  man  is  stamped  with  an  irrevocable 
psychology,  and  Is  cramped  for  perpetuity  in  the 
prison  of  his  skull.  It  was  a  world  that  expected 
everything  of  everybody.  It  was  a  world  that  en- 
couraged anybody  to  be  anything.  And  in  Eng- 
land and  literature  its  living  expression  was 
Dickens. 

We  shall  consider  Dickens  in  many  other  ca- 
pacities, but  let  us  put  this  one  first.  He3[as  the 
voice  in  England  of  this  humane_iDf^v^^f^ti^n  and 
expansion,  this  encouraging  of  anybody  to  be  any- 
thing. His  best  books  are  a  carnival  of  liberty, 
and  there  is  more  of  the  real  spirit  of  the  French 
Revolution  in  "  Nicholas  Nickleby  "  than  in  "  The 
Tale  of  Two  Cities."  His  work  has  the  great 
glory  of  the  Revolution,  the  bidding  of  every  man 
tQ_Ji£. Jilmself ;  it  has  also  the  revolutionary  defi- 
ciency; it  seems  to  think  that  this  mere  emancipa- 
tion is  enough.  No  man  encouraged  his  characters 
so  much  as  Dickens.  *'  I  am  an  affectionate 
father/^  he  says^  ^^  to  every  rh-U4-€^f-Tny "fancy. ' * 
He  was  not  only  an  affectionate  father,  he  was  an 
everlndulgent  father.  The  children  of  his  fancy 
are  spoilt  children.  They  shake  the  house  like 
heavy  and  shouting  schoolboys;  they  smash  the 

14 


THE    DICKENS     PERIOD 

story  to  pieces  like  so  much  furniture.  When  we 
moderns  write  stories  our  characters  are  better  con- 
trolled. But,  alas !  our  characters  are  rather  easier 
to  control.  We  are  in  no  danger  from  the  gigantic 
gambols  of  creatures  like  Mantalini  and  Micaw- 
ber.  We  are  in  no  danger  of  giving  our  readers 
too  much  Weller  or  Wegg.  We  have  not  got  it 
to  give.  When  we  experience  the  ungovernable 
sense  of  life  which  goes  along  with  the  old  Dickens 
sense  of  liberty,  we  experience  the  best  of  the 
revolution.  We  are  filled  with  the  first  of  all 
democratic  doctrines,  that  all  men  are  interesting;- 
Dickens  tried  to  make  some  of  his  people  appear 
dull  people,  but  he  could  not  keep  them  dull.  He 
could  not  make  a  monotonous  man.  The  bores  In 
his  books  are  brighter  than  the  wits  in  other  books. 

I  have  put  this  position  first  for  a  defined  rea- 
son. It  is  useless  for  us  to  attempt  to  imagine 
Dickens  and  his  life  unless  we  are  able  at  least 
to  imagine  this  old  atmosphere  of  a  jjemocratic 
optimism — a  confidence  in  common  men.  Dickens 
depends  u_^Qn  such  a  comprehension  in  a  rather 
unusual  manner,  a  manner  worth  explanation,  or 
at  least  remark. 

The  disadvantage  under  which  Dickens  has 
fallen,  both  as  an  artist  and  a  moralist,  is  very 
plain.     His  misfortune  is  that  neither  of  the  two 

15 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

last  movements  In  literary  criticism  has  done  him 
any  good.  He  has  suffered  alike  from  his  enemies, 
and  from  the  enemies  of  his  enemies.  The  facts 
to  which  I  refer  are  familiar.  When  the  world 
first  awoke  from  the  mere  hypnotism  of  Dickens, 
from  the  direct  tyranny  of  his  temperament,  there 
was,  of  course,  a  reaction.  At  the  head  of  It  came 
the  Realists,  with  their  documents,  like  Miss  Fllte. 
They  declared  that  scenes  and  types  In  Dickens 
were  wholly  Impossible  (In  which  they  were  per- 
fectly right),  and  on  this  rather  paradoxical 
ground  objected  to  them  as  literature.  They  were 
not  "  like  life,"  and  there,  they  thought,  was  an 
end  of  the  matter.  The  Realist  for  a  time  pre- 
vailed. But  Realists  did  not  enjoy  their  victory 
(If  they  enjoyed  anything)  very  long.  A  more 
symbolic  school  of  criticism  soon  arose.  Men  saw 
that  It  was  necessary  to  give  a  much  deeper  and 
more  delicate  meaning  to  the  expression  "  like 
life."  Streets  are  not  life,  cities  and  civilizations 
are  not  life,  faces  even,  and  voices  are  not  life 
Itself.  Life  Is  within,  and  no  man  hath  seen  it 
at  any  time.  As  for  our  meals,  and  our  manners, 
and  our  dally  dress,  these  are  things  exactly  like 
sonnets;  they  are  random  symbols  of  the  soul. 
One  man  tries  to  express  himself  In  books,  an- 
other in  boots;  both  probably  fall.     Our  solid 

i6 


THE    DICKENS     PERIOD 

houses  and  square  meals  are  In  the  strict  sense 
fiction.  They  are  things  made  up  to  typify  our 
thoughts.  The  coat  a  man  wears  may  be  wholly 
fictitious ;  the  movement  of  his  hands  may  be  quite 
unlike  life. 

This  much  the  Intelligence  of  men  soon  per- 
ceived. And  by  this  much  Dickens's  fame  should 
have  greatly  profited.  For  Dickens  is  "  like  life  " 
In  the  truer  sense,  in  the  sense  that  he  is  akin  to 
the  living  principle  In  us  and  In  the  universe ;  he  is 
like  life,  at  least_in  this  detail,  that  he  is  alive. 
His  art  is  like  life,  because,  like  life,  It  cares  for 
nothing  outside  Itselfj  and  goes  on  Its. way  rejoic- 
ing. Both  produce  monsters  with  a  kind  of  care- 
lessness, like  enormous  by-products;  life  producing 
the  rhinoceros,  and  art  Mr.  Bunsby.  Art  indeed 
copies  life  in  not  copying  life,  for  life  copies  noth- 
ing. Dickens's  art  is  like  life  because,  like  life, 
it  is_ irresponsible,  because,  like  life,  it  is  Incredible. 

Yet  the  return  of  this  realization  has  not  gr^tly 
profited  DIckensj  the  return  of  romance  has  been 
almost  useless  to  this  great  romantic.  He  has 
gained  as  little  from  the  fall  of  the  Realists  as 
from  their  triumph;  there  has  been  a  revolution, 
there  has  been  a  counter  revolution,  there  has  been 
no  restoration.  And  the  reason  of  this  brings  us 
back  to  that  atmosphere  of  popular  optimism  of 

17 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

which  I  spoke.  And  the  shortest  way  of  express- 
ing the  more  recent  neglect  of  Dickens  Is  to  say 
that  for  our  time  and  taste  he  exaggerates  the 
wrong  thing. 

Exaggeration  is  the  definition  of  Art.  That  both 
Dickens  and  the  moderns  understood  Art  Is,  In  Its 
inmost  nature,  fantastic.  Time  brings  queer  re- 
venges, and  while  the  Realists  were  yet  living,  the 
art  of  Dickens  was  justified  by  Aubrey  Beardsley. 
But  men  like  Aubrey  Beardsley  were  allowed  to 
be  fantastic,  because  the  mood  which  they  over- 
strained and  overstated  was  a  mood  which  their 
period  understood.  Dickens  overstrains  and  over- 
states a  mood  our  period  does  not  understand. 
The  truth  he  exaggerates  Is  exactly  this  old  Revo- 
lution sense  of  Infinite  opportunity  and  boisterous 
brotherhood.  And  we  resent  his  undue  sense  of 
it,  because  we  ourselves  have  not  even  a  due  sense 
of  It.  We  feel  troubled  with  too  much  where  we 
have  too  little;  we  wish  he  would  keep  It  within 
bounds.  For  we  are  all  exact  and  scientific  on  the 
subjects  we  do  not  care  about.  We  all  Immediately 
detect  exaggeration  In  an  exposition  of  Mormon- 
Ism  or  a  patriotic  speech  from  Paraguay.  We  all 
require  sobriety  on  the  subject  of  the  sea  serpent. 
But  the  moment  we  begin  to  believe  a  thing  our- 
selves, that  moment  we  begin  easily  t,o  overstate 

i8 


THE    DICKENS    PERIOD 

It;  and  the  moment  our  souls  become  serious,  our 
words  become  a  little  wild.  And  certain  moderns 
are  thus  placed  towards  exaggeration.  They  per- 
mit any  writer  to  emphasize  doubts,  for  instance, 
for  doubts  are  their  religion,  but  they  permit  no 
man  to  emphasize  dogmas.  If  a  man  be  the  mild- 
est Christian,  they  smell  "  cant ";  but  he  can  be  a 
raving  windmill  of  pessimism,  and  they  call  It 
"  temperament."  If  a  moralist  paints  a  wild  pict- 
ure of  immorality,  they  doubt  its  truth,  they  say 
that  devils  are  not  so  black  as  they  are  painted. 
But  If  a  pessimist  paints  a  wild  picture  of  melan- 
choly, they  accept  the  whole  horrible  psychology, 
and  they  never  ask  if  devils  are  as  blue  as  they  are 
painted. 

It  Is  evident,  in  short,  why  even  those  who  ad- 
mire exaggeration  do  not  admire  Dickens.  He 
is  exaggerating  the  wrong  thing.  They  know  what 
It  Is  to  feel  a  sadness  so  strange  and  deep  that  only 
Impossible  characters  can  express  it:  they  do  not 
know  what  it  Is  to  feel  a  joy  so  vital  and  vio- 
lent that  only  impossible  characters  can  express 
that.  They  know  that  the  soul  can  be  so 
sad  as  to  dream  naturally  of  the  blue  faces 
of  the  corpses  of  Baudelaire:  they  do  not  know 
that  the  soul  can  be  so  cheerful  as  to  dream 
naturally  of  the  blue  face  of  Major  Bagstock. 

19 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

They  know  that  there  Is  a  point  of  depression  at 
which  one  believes  in  Tintagiles :  they  do  not  know 
that  there  is  a  point  of  exhilaration  at  which  one 
believes  in  Mr.  Wegg.  To  them  the  impossibili- 
ties of  Dickens  seem  much  more  impossible  than 
they  really  are,  because  they  are  already  attuned 
to  the  opposite  impossibilities  of  Maeterlinck.  For 
every  mood  there  Is  an  appropriate  Impossibility 
— a  decent  and  tactful  Impossibility — fitted  to  the 
frame  of  mind.  Every  train  of  thought  may  end 
in  an  ecstasy,  and  all  roads  lead  to  Elfland.  But 
few  now  walk  far  enough  along  the  street  of 
Dickens  to  find  the  place  where  the  cockney  villas 
grow  so  comic  that  they  become  poetical.  People 
do  not  know  how  far  mere  good  spirits  will  go. 
For  Instance,  we  never  think  (as  the  old  folk-lore 
did)  of  good  spirits  reaching  to  the  spiritual 
world.  We  see  this  in  the  complete  absence  from 
modem,  popular  supernaturalism  of  the  old  popu- 
lar mirth.  We  hear  plenty  to-day  of  the  wisdom 
of  the  spiritual  world;  but  we  do  not  hear,  as 
our  fathers  did,  of  the  folly  of  the  spiritual 
world,  of  the  tricks  of  the  gods,  and  the  jokes  of 
the  patron  saints.  Our  popular  tales  tell  us  of  a 
man  who  Is  so  wise  that  he  touches  the  super- 
natural, like  Dr.  Nikola;  but  they  never  tell  us 
(like  the  popular  tales  of  the  past)  of  a  man  who 

20 


THE    DICKENS     PERIOD 

was  so  silly  that  he  touched  the  supernatural,  like 
Bottom  the  Weaver.  We  do  not  understand  the 
dark  and  transcendental  sympathy  between  fairies 
and  fools.  We  understand  a  devout  occultism,  an 
evil  occultism,  a  tragic  occultism,  but  a  farcical 
occultism  is  beyond  us.  Yet  a  farcical  occultism  is 
the  very  essence  of  "  The  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream."  It  is  also  the  right  and  credible  essence 
of  "  The  Christmas  Carol."  Whether  we  under- 
stand it.  depends  upon  whether  we  can  understand 
that  exhilaration  is  not  a  physical  accident,  but  a 
mystical  fact;  that  exhilaration  can  be  Infinite,  like 
sorrow;  that  a  joke  can  be  so  big  that  it  breaks 
the  roof  of  the  stars.  By  simply  going  on  being 
absurd,  a  thing  can  become  godlike;  there  is  but 
one  step  from  the  ridiculous  to  the  sublime. 

Dickens  was  great  because  he  was  immoderately 
possessed  with  all  this;  if  we  are  to  understand 
him  at  all  we  must  also  be  moderately  possessed 
with  It.  We  must  understand  this  old  limitless 
hilarity  and  human  confidence,  at  least  enough  to 
be  able  to  endure  it  when  it  is  pushed  a  great  deal 
too  far.  For  Dickens  did  push  it  too  far;  he  did 
push  the  hilarity  to  the  point  of  Incredible  char- 
acter-drawing; he  did  push  the  human  confidence 
to  the  point  of  an  unconvincing  sentimentallsm. 
You  can  trace,  if  you  will,  the  revolutionary  joy 

21 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

till  It  reaches  the  Incredible  Sapsea  epitaph;  you 
can  trace  the  revolutionary  hope  till  It  reaches  the 
repentance  of  Dombey.  There  Is  plenty  to  carp 
at  In  this  man  If  you  are  Inclined  to  carp ;  you  may 
easily  find  him  vulgar  If  you  cannot  see  that  he 
is  divine;  and  If  you  cannot  laugh  with  Dickens, 
undoubtedly  you  can  laugh  at  him. 

I  believe  myself  that  this  braver  world  of  his 
will  certainly  return ;  for  I  believe  that  It  Is  bound 
up  with  realities,  like  morning  and  the  spring. 
But  for  those  who  beyond  remedy  regard  It  as  an 
error,  I  put  this  appeal  before  any  other  observa- 
tions on  Dickens.  First  let  us  sympathize,  if  only 
for  an  Instant,  with  the  hopes  of  the  Dickens 
period,  with  that  cheerful  trouble  of  change.  If 
democracy  has  disappointed  you,  do  not  think  of 
It  as  a  burst  bubble,  but  at  least  as  a  broken  heart, 
an  old  love-affair.  Do  not  sneer  at  the  time  when 
the  creed  of  humanity  was  on  Its  honeymoon ;  treat 
it  with  the  dreadful  reverence  that  Is  due  to  youth. 
For  you,  perhaps,  a  drearier  philosophy  has  cov- 
ered and  eclipsed  the  earth.  The  fierce  poet  of 
the  Middle  Ages  wrote,  "  Abandon  hope  all  ye 
who  enter  here  '*  over  the  gates  of  the  lower  world. 
The  emancipated  poets  of  to-day  have  written  it 
over  the  gates  of  this  world.  But  if  we  are  to 
understand  the  story  which  follows,  we  must  erase 

22 


THE    DICKENS    PERIOD 

that  apocalyptic  writing,  If  only  for  an  hour.  We 
must  recreate  the  faith  of  our  fathers,  If  only  as 
an  artistic  atmosphere.  If,  then,  you  are  a  pessi- 
mist, in  reading  this  story,  forego  for  a  little  the 
pleasures  of  pessimism.  Dream  for  one  mad  mo- 
ment that  the  grass  Is  green.  Unlearn  that  sinister 
learning  that  you  think  so  clear;  deny  that  deadly 
knowledge  that  you  think  you  know.  Surrender 
the  very  flower  of  your  culture;  give  up  the  very 
jewel  of  your  pride;  abandon  hopelessness,  all  ye 
who  enter  here. 


23 


CHAPTER    II 

THE  BOYHOOD  OF  DICKENS 

Charles  Dickens  was  born  at  Landport,  in 
Portsea,  on  February  7,  18 12.  His  father  was 
a  clerk  In  the  Navy  Pay-office,  and  was  tempo- 
rarily on  duty  In  the  neighbourhood.  Very  soon 
after  the  birth  of  Charles  Dickens,  however,  the 
family  moved  for  a  short  period  to  Norfolk  Street, 
Bloomsbury,  and  then  for  a  long  period  to  Chat- 
ham, which  thus  became  the  real  home,  and  for  all 
serious  purposes,  the  native  place  of  Dickens.  The 
whole  story  of  his  life  moves  like  a  Canterbury 
pilgrimage  along  the  great  roads  of  Kent. 

John  Dickens,  his  father,  was,  as  stated,  a  clerk; 
but  such  mere  terms  of  trade  tell  us  little  of  the 
tone  or  status  of  a  family.  Browning's  father  (to 
take  an  Instance  at  random)  would,  also  be  de- 
scribed as  a  clerk  and  a  man  of  the  middle  class; 
but  the  Browning  family  and  the  Dickens  family 
have  the  colour  of  two  different  civilizations.  The 
difference  cannot  be  conveyed  merely  by  saying 
that  Browning  stood  many  strata  above  Dickens. 
It  must  also  be  conveyed  that  Browning  belonged 

24 


THE    BOYHOOD     OF    DICKENS 

to  that  section  of  the  middle  class  which  tends  (In 
the  small  social  sense)  to  rise;  the  DIckenses  to 
that  section  which  tends  In  the  same  sense  to  fall. 
If  Browning  had  not  been  a  poet,  he  would  have 
been  a  better  clerk  than  his  father,  and  his  son 
probably  a  better  and  richer  clerk  than  he.  But 
If  they  had  not  been  lifted  In  the  air  by  the  enor- 
mous accident  of  a  man  of  genius,  the  DIckenses, 
I  fancy  would  have  appeared  In  poorer  and  poorer 
places,  as  Inventory  clerks,  as  caretakers,  as  ad- 
dressers of  envelopes,  until  they  melted  into  the 
masses  of  the  poor. 

Yet  at  the  time  of  Dickens's  birth  and  childhood 
this  weakness  In  their  worldly  destiny  was  In  no 
way  apparent;  especially  It  was  not  apparent  to 
the  little  Charles  himself.  He  was  born  and  grew 
up  In  a  paradise  of  small  prosperity.  He  fell  Into 
the  family,  so  to  speak,  during  one  of  Its  comfort- 
able periods,  and  he  never  In  those  early  days 
thought  of  himself  as  anything  but  as  a  comfort- 
able middle-class  child,  the  son  of  a  comfortable 
middle-class  man.  The  father  whom  he  found 
provided  for  him,  was  one  from  whom  comfort 
drew  forth  his  most  pleasant  and  reassuring  quali- 
ties, though  not  perhaps  his  most  Interesting  and 
peculiar.  John  Dickens  seemed,  most  probably, 
a  hearty  and  kindly  character,  a  little  florid  of 

25 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

speech,  a  little  careless  of  duty  In  some  details, 
notably  In  the  detail  of  education.  His  neglect 
of  his  son's  mental  training  In  later  and  more  try- 
ing times  was  a  piece  of  unconscious  selfishness 
which  remained  a  little  acrimoniously  In  his  son's 
mind  through  life.  But  even  In  this  earlier  and 
easier  period  what  records  there  are  of  John  Dick- 
ens give  out  the  air  of  a  somewhat  Idle  and  irre- 
sponsible fatherhood.  He  exhibited  towards  his 
son  that  contradiction  In  conduct  which  is  always 
shown  by  the  too  thoughtless  parent  to  the  too 
thoughtful  child.  He  contrived  at  once  to  neglect 
his  mind,  and  also  to  over-stimulate  It. 

There  are  many  recorded  tales  and  traits  of  the 
author's  Infancy,  but  one  small  fact  seems  to  me 
more  than  any  other  to  strike  the  note  and  give  the 
key  to  his  whole  strange  character.  His  father 
found  It  more  amusing  to  be  an  audience  than  to 
be  an  instructor;  and  instead  of  giving  the  child 
Intellectual  pleasure,  called  upon  him,  almost  be- 
fore he  was  out  of  petticoats,  to  provide  It.  Some 
of  the  earliest  glimpses  we  have  of  Charles  Dick- 
ens show  him  to  us  perched  on  some  chair  or  table 
singing  comic  songs  In  an  atmosphere  of  perpetual 
applause.  So,  almost  as  soon  as  he  can  toddle,  he 
steps  Into  the  glare  of  the  footlights.  He  never 
stepped  out  of  It  until  he  died.     He  was  a  good 

26 


THE    BOYHOOD    OF    DICKENS 

man,  as  men  go  In  this  bewildering  world  of  ours, 
brave,  transparent,  tender-hearted,  scrupulously  In- 
dependent and  honourable ;  he  was  not  a  man 
whose  weaknesses  should  be  spoken  of  without 
some  delicacy  and  doubt.  But  there  did  mingle 
with  his  merits  all  his  life  this  theatrical  quality, 
this  atmosphere  of  being  shown  off — a  sort  of 
hilarious  self-consciousness.  His  literary  life  was 
a  triumphal  procession;  he  died  drunken  with 
glory.  And  behind  all  this  nine  years'  wonder  that 
filled  the  world,  behind  his  gigantic  tours  and  his 
ten  thousand  editions,  the  crowded  lectures  and  the 
crashing  brass,  behind  all  the  thing  we  really  see 
Is  the  flushed  face  of  a  little  boy  singing  music-hall 
songs  to  a  circle  of  aunts  and  uncles.  And  this 
precocious  pleasure  explains  much,  too,  in  the 
moral  way.  Dickens  had  all  his  life  the  faults  of 
the  little  boy  who  Is  kept  up  too  late  at  night. 
The  boy  in  such  a  case  exhibits  a  psychological 
paradox;  he  is  a  little  too  irritable  because  he  Is  a 
little  too  happy.  Dickens  was  always  a  little  too 
Irritable  because  he  was  a  little  too  happy.  Like 
the  over-wrought  child  In  society,  he  was  splen- 
didly sociable,  and  yet  suddenly  quarrelsome.  In 
all  the  practical  relations  of  his  life  he  was  what 
the  child  Is  in  the  last  hours  of  an  evening  party, 
genuinely   delighted,    genuinely   delightful,   genu- 

27 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

inely  affectionate  and  happy,  and  yet  In  some 
strange  way  fundamentally  exasperated  and  dan- 
gerously close  to  tears. 

There  was  another  touch  about  the  boy  which 
made  his  case  more  peculiar,  and  perhaps  his  In- 
telligence more  fervid;  the  touch  of  Ill-health. 
It  could  not  be  called  more  than  a  touch,  for  he 
suffered  from  no  formidable  malady  and  could 
always  through  life  endure  a  great  degree  of 
exertion  even  If  It  was  only  the  exertion  of  walk- 
ing violently  all  night.  Still  the  streak  of  sickness 
was  sufficient  to  take  him  out  of  the  common  un- 
conscious life  of  the  community  of  boys;  and  for 
good  or  evil  that  withdrawal  Is  always  a  matter  of 
deadly  Importance  to  the  mind.  He  was  thrown 
back  perpetually  upon  the  pleasures  of  the  Intelli- 
gence, and  these  began  to  burn  in  his  head  like 
a  pent  and  painful  furnace.  In  his  own  unvary- 
ingly vivid  way  he  has  described  how  he  crawled 
up  into  an  unconsidered  garret,  and  there  found,  in 
a  dusty  heap,  the  undying  literature  of  England. 
The  books  he  mentions  chiefly  are  "  Humphrey 
^Clinker  "  and  "  Tom  Jones.'*  When  he  opened 
those  two  books  in  the  garret  he  caught  hold  of  the 
only  past  with  which  he  Is  at  all  connected,  the 
great  comic  writers  of  England  of  whom  he  was 
destined  to  be  the  last. 

28 


THE    BOYHOOD    OF    DICKENS 

It  must  be  remembered  (as  I  have  suggested 
before)  that  there  was  something  about  the  county 
in  which  he  lived,  and  the  great  roads  along  which 
he  travelled  that  sympathized  with  and  stimulated 
his  pleasure 'in  this  old  picaresque  literature.  The 
groups  that  came  along  the  road,  that  passed 
through  his  town  and  out  of  it,  were  of  the  motley 
laughable  type  that  tumbled  into  ditches  or  beat 
down  the  doors  of  taverns  under  the  escort  of 
Smollett  and  Fielding.  In  our  time  the  main  roads 
of  Kent  have  upon  them  very  often  a  perpetual 
procession  of  tramps  and  tinkers  unknown  on  the 
quiet  hills  of  Sussex;  and  it  may  have  been  so  also 
in  Dickens's  boyhood.  In  his  neighbourhood  were 
definite  memorials  of  yet  older  and  yet  greater 
English  comedy.  From  the  height  of  Gad's-hill  at 
which  he  stared  unceasingly  there  looked  down 
upon  him  the  monstrous  ghost  of  Falstaff,  Falstaff 
who  might  well  have  been  the  spiritual  father  of 
all  Dickens's  adorable  knaves,  Falstaff  the  great 
mountain  of  English  laughter  and  English  senti- 
mentalism,  the  great,  healthy,  humane  English 
humbug,  not  to  be  matched  among  the  nations. 

At  this  eminence  of  Gad's-hill  Dickens  used  to 
stare  even  as  a  boy  with  the  steady  purpose  of 
some  day  making  it  his  own.  It  Is  characteristic 
of  the  consistency  which  underlies  the  superficially 

29 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

erratic  career  of  Dickens  that  he  actually  did  live 
to  make  it  his  own.  The  truth  is  that  he  was  a 
precocious  child,  precocious  not  only  on  the  more 
poetical  but  on  the  more  prosaic  side  of  life.  He 
was  ambitious  as  well  as  enthusiastic.  No  one  can 
ever  know  what  visions  they  were  that  crowded 
into  the  head  of  the  clever  little  brat  as  he  ran 
about  the  streets  of  Chatham  or  stood  glowering 
at  Gad's-hill.  But  I  think  that  quite  mundane 
visions  had  a  very  considerable  share  in  the  matter. 
He  longed  to  go  to  school  (a  strange  wish) ,  to  go 
to  college,  to  make  a  name,  nor  did  he  merely 
aspire  to  these  things;  the  great  number  of  them 
he  also  expected.  He  regarded  himself  as  a  child 
of  good  position  just  about  to  enter  on  a  life  of 
good  luck.  He  thought  his  home  and  family  a 
very  good  spring-board  or  jumping-off  place  from 
which  to  fling  himself  to  the  positions  which  he 
desired  to  reach.  And  almost  as  he  was  about 
to  spring  the  whole  structure  broke  under  him, 
and  he  and  all  that  belonged  to  him  disappeared 
into  a  darkness  far  below. 

Everything  had  been  struck  down  as  with  the 
finality  of  a  thunder-bolt.  His  lordly  father  was 
a  bankrupt,  and  in  the  Marshalsea  prison.  His 
mother  was  in  a  mean  home  in  the  north  of  Lon- 
A^riy  wildly  proclaiming  herself  the  principal  of 

30 


THE    BOYHOOD    OF    DICKENS 

a  girPs  school,  a  girl's  school  to  which  nobody 
would  go.  And  he  himself,  the  conqueror  of  the 
world  and  the  prospective  purchaser  of  Gads-hill, 
passed  some  distracted  and  bewildering  days  in 
pawning  the  household  necessities  to  Fagins  In  foul 
shops,  and  then  found  himself  somehow  or  other 
one  of  a  row  of  ragged  boys  in  a  great  dreary 
factory,  pasting  the  same  kinds  of  labels  on  to  the 
same  kinds  of  blacking  bottles  from  morning  till 
night. 

Although  it  seemed  sudden  enough  to  him,  the 
disintegration  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  of  course, 
been  going  on  for  a  long  time.  He  had  only  heard 
from  his  father  dark  and  melodramatic  allusions 
to  a  "  deed  "  which,  from  the  way  it  was  men- 
tioned, might  have  been  a  claim  to  the  crown  or 
a  compact  with  the  devil,  but  which  was  in  truth 
an  unsuccessful  documentary  attempt  on  the  part 
of  John  Dickens  to  come  to  a  composition  with 
his  creditors.  And  now.  In  the  lurid  light  of  his 
sunset,  the  character  of  John  Dickens  began  to 
take  on  those  purple  colours  which  have  made 
him  under  another  name  absurd  and  Immortal.  It  i 
required  a  tragedy  to  bring  out  this  man's  comedy,  f 
So  long  as  John  Dickens  was  In  easy  circum- 
Gtances,  he  seemed  only  an  easy  man,  a  little  long 
and  luxuriant  In  his  phrases,  a  little  careless  in 

31 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

his  business  routine.  He  seemed  only  a  wordy 
man,  who  lived  on  bread  and  beef  like  his  neigh- 
bours; but  as  bread  and  beef  were  successively 
taken  away  from  him,  it  was  discovered  that  he 
lived  on  words.  For  him  to  be  involved  in  a 
calamity  only  meant  to  be  cast  for  the  first  part 
in  a  tragedy.  For  him  blank  ruin  was  only  a 
subject  for  blank  verse.  Henceforth  we  feel 
scarcely  inclined  to  call  him  John  Dickens  at  all; 
we  feel  inclined  to  call  him  by  the  name  through 
which  his  son  celebrated  this  preposterous  and  sub- 
lime victory  of  the  human  spirit  over  circum- 
stances. Dickens,  in  "  David  Cof^erfield,"  called 
him  Wllklns  Micawber.  In  his  personal  corre- 
spondence he  called  him  the  Prodigal  Father. 

Young  Charles  had  been  hurriedly  flung  Into  the 
factory  by  the  more  or  less  careless  good-nature 
of  James  Lamert,  a  relation  of  his  mother's;  it 
was  a  blacking  factory,  supposed  to  be  run  as  a 
rival  to  Warren's  by  another  and  "  original " 
Warren,  both  practically  conducted  by  another  of 
the  Lamerts.  It  was  situated  near  Hungerford 
Market.  Dickens  worked  there  drearily,  like  one 
stunned  with  disappointment.  To  a  child  exces- 
sively intellectuallzed,  and  at  this  time,  I  fear, 
excessively  egotistical,  the  coarseness  of  the  whole 
thing — the  work,  the  rooms,  the  boys,  the  lan- 

32 


THE    BOYHOOD    OF    DICKENS 

guage — was  a  sort  of  bestial  nightmare.  Not  only 
did  he  scarcely  speak  of  It  then,  but  he  scarcely 
spoke  of  It  afterwards.  Years  later,  In  the  fulness 
of  his  fame,  he  heard  from  Forster  that  a  man 
had  spoken  of  knowing  him.  On  hearing  the 
name,  he  somewhat  curtly  acknowledged  It,  and 
spoke  of  having  seen  the  man  once.  Forster,  in 
his  innocence,  answered  that  the  man  said  he  had 
seen  Dickens  many  times  In  a  factory  by  Hunger- 
ford  Market.  Dickens  was  suddenly  struck  with 
a  long  and  extraordinary  silence.  Then  he  invited 
Forster,  as  his  best  friend,  to  a  particular  inter- 
view, and,  with  every  appearance  of  difficulty  and 
distress,  told  him  the  whole  story  for  the  first  and 
the  last  time.  A  long  while  after  that  he  told  the 
world  some  part  of  the  matter  in  the  account  of 
Murdstone  and  Grinby's  in  "  David  Copperfield." 
/  He  never  spoke,  of  the  whole  experience  except 

/    once  or  twice,  and  he  never  spoke  of  it  otherwise 

.     than  as  a  man  might  speak  of  hell. 

It  need  not  be  suggested,  I  think,  that  this 
agony  in  the  child  was  exaggerated  by  the  man. 
It  is  true  that  he  was  not  incapable  of  the  vice  of 
exaggeration,  if  it  be  a  vice.  There  was  about 
him  much  vanity^  and  a  certain  virulence  in  his 
version  of  many  things.  Upon  the  whole,  indeed, 
it  would  hardly  be  too  much  to  say  that  he  would 

33 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

have  exaggerated  any  sorrow  he  talked  about. 
But  this  was  a  sorrow  with  a  very  strange  position 
in  Dickens's  life;  it  was  a  sorrow  he  did  not  talk 
about.  Upon  this  particular  dark  spot  he  kept  a 
sort  of  deadly  silence  for  twenty  years.  An  ac- 
cident revealed  part  of  the  truth  to  the  dearest 
of  all  his  friends.  He  then  told  the  whole  truth 
to  the  dearest  of  all  his  friends.  He  never  told 
anybody  else.  I  do  not  think  that  this  arose  from 
any  social  sense  of  disgrace;  if  he  had  it  slightly 
at  the  time,  he  was  far  too  self-satisfied  a  man  to 
have  taken  it  seriously  in  after  life.  I  really  think 
that  his  pain  at  this  time  was  so  real  and  ugly  that 
the  thought  of  it  filled  him  with  that '  sort  of 
impersonal  but  unbearable  shame  with  which  we 
are  filled,  for  instance,  by  the  notion  of  physical 
torture,  of  something  that  humiliates  humanity. 
He  felt  that  such  agony  was  something  obscene. 
Moreover  there  are  two  other  good  reasons  for 
thinking  that  his  sense  of  hopelessness  was  very 
genuine.  First  of  all,  this  starless  outlook  is  com- 
mon in  the  calamities  of  boyhood.  The  bitterness 
of  boyish  distresses  does  not  lie  in  the  fact  that 
they  are  large;  it  lies  in  the  fact  that  we  do  not 
know  that  they  are  small.  About  any  early  dis- 
aster there  is  a  dreadful  finality;  a  lost  child  can 
suffer  like  a  lost  soul. 

34 


THE    BOYHOOD    OF    DICKENS 

It  Is  currently  said  that  hope  goes  with  youth, 
and  lends  to  youth  Its  wings  of  a  butterfly;  but 
I  fancy  that  hope  Is  the  last  gift  given  to  man,  and 
the  only  gift  not  given  to  youth.  Youth  Is  pre- 
eminently the  period  in  which  a  man  can  be  lyric, 
fanatical,  poetic;  but  youth  is  the  period  in  which 
a  man  can  be  hopeless.  The  end  of  every  episode 
Is  the  end  of  the  world.  But  the  power  of  hoping 
through  everything,  the  knowledge  that  the  soul 
survives  its  adventures,  that  great  Inspiration  com:es 
to  the  middle-aged;  God  has  kept  that  good  wine 
until  now.  It  Is  from  the  backs  of  the  elderly 
gentlemen  that  the  wings  of  the  butterfly  should 
burst.  There  Is  nothing  that  so  much  mystifies 
the  young  as  the  consistent  frivolity  of  the  old. 
They  have  discovered  their  indestructibility.  They 
are  In  their  second  and  clearer  childhood,  and 
there  Is  a  meaning  in  the  merriment  of  their  eyes. 
They  have  seen  the  end  of  the  End  of  the  World. 

First,  then,  the  desolate  finality  of  Dickens's 
childish  mood  makes  me  think  It  was  a  real  one. 
And  there  Is  another  thing  to  be  remembered. 
Dickens  was  not  a  saintly  child  after  the  style 
of  Little  Dorrit  or  Little  Nell.  He  had  not, 
at  this  time  at  any  rate,  set  his  heart  wholly  upon 
higher  things,  even  upon  things  such  as  personal 
tenderness  or  loyalty.     He  had  been,  and  was, 

35 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

unless  I  am  very  much  mistaken,  sincerely,  stub- 
bornly, bitterly  ambitious.  He  had,  I  fancy,  a 
fairly  clear  Idea  previous  to  the  downfall  of  all 
his  family's  hopes  of  what  he  wanted  to  do  In 
the  world,  and  of  the  mark  that  he  meant  to  make 
there.  In  no  dishonourable  sense,  but  still  In  a 
definite  sense  he  might,  In  early  life,  be  called 
worldly;  and  the  children  of  this  world  are  In  their 
generation  Infinitely  more  sensitive  than  the  chil- 
dren of  light.  A  saint  after  repentance  will  for- 
give himself  for  a  sin ;  a  man  about  town  will  never 
forgive  himself  for  a  faux  pas.  There  are  ways 
of  getting  absolved  for  murder ;  there  are  no  ways 
of  getting  absolved  for  upsetting  the  soup.  This 
thin-skinned  quality  in  all  very  mundane  people 
is  a  thing  too  little  remembered;  and  It  must  not 
be  wholly  forgotten  In  connection  with  a  clever, 
restless  lad  who  dreamed  of  a  destiny.  That  part 
of  his  distress  which  concerned  himself  and  his 
social  standing  was  among  the  other  parts  of  It 
the  least  noble;  but  perhaps  it  was  the  most  pain- 
ful. For  pride  Is  not  only  (as  the  modern  world 
fails  to  understand)  a  sin  to  be  condemned;  it  is 
also  (as  It  understands  even  less)  a  weakness  to 
be  very  much  commiserated.  A  very  vitalizing 
touch  is  given  In  one  of  his  own  reminiscences. 
His  most  unendurable  moment  did  not  come  in  any 

36 


THE     BOYHOOD    OF    DICKENS 

bullying  in  the  factory  or  any  famine  In  the  streets. 
It  came  when  he  went  to  see  his  sister  Fanny 
take  a  prize  at  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music.  "  I 
could  not  bear  to  think  of  myself — beyond  the 
reach  of  all  such  honourable  emulation  and  success. 
The  tears  ran  down  my  face.  I  felt  as  If  my  heart 
were  rent.  I  prayed  when  I  went  to  bed  that  night 
to  be  lifted  out  of  the  humiliation  and  neglect  in 
which  I  was.  I  never  had  suffered  so  much  before. 
There  was  no  envy  In  this.''  I  do  not  think  that 
there  was,  though  the  poor  little  wretch  could 
hardly  have  been  blamed  if  there  had  been.  There 
was  only  a  furious  sense  of  frustration;  a  spirit 
like  a  wild  beast  in  a  cage.  It  was  only  a  small 
matter  in  the  external  and  obvious  sense;  It  was 
only  Dickens  prevented  from  being  Dickens. 

If  we  put  these  facts  together,  that  the  tragedy 
seemed  final,  and  that  the  tragedy  was  concerned 
with  the  supersensitive  matters  of  the  ego  and 
the  gentleman,  I  think  we  can  Imagine  a  pretty 
genuine  case  of  Internal  depression.  And  when 
we  add  to  the  case  of  the  Internal  depression  the 
case  of  the  external  oppression,  the  case  of  the 
material  circumstances  by  which  he  was  sur- 
rounded, we  have  reached  a  sort  of  midnight.  All 
day  he  worked  on  Insufficient  food  at  a  factory. 
It  Is  sufficient  to  say  that  It  afterwards  appeared 

37 


CHARLES     DICKENS       ' 

In  his  works  as  Murdstone  and  Grinby's.  At 
night  he  returned  disconsolately  to  a  lodging-house 
for  such  lads,  kept  by  an  old  lady.  It  is  sufficient 
to  say  that  she  appeared  afterwards  as  Mrs.  Pip- 
chin.  Once  a  week  only  he  saw  anybody  for  whom 
he  cared  a  straw;  that  was  when  he  went  to  the 
Marshalsea  prison,  and  that  gave  his  juvenile 
pride,  half  manly  and  half  snobbish,  bitter  annoy- 
ance of  another  kind.  Add  to  this,  finally,  that 
physically  he  was  always  very  weak  and  never 
very  well.  Once  he  was  struck  down  in  the  middle 
of  his  work  with  sudden  bodily  pain.  The  boy 
who  worked  next  to  him,  a  coarse  and  heavy  lad 
named  Bob  Fagin,  who  had  often  attacked  Dick- 
ens on  the  not  unreasonable  ground  of  his  being 
a  "  gentleman,'*  suddenly  showed  that  enduring 
sanity  of  compassion  which  Dickens  was  destined 
to  show  so  often  in  the  characters  of  the  common 
and  unclean.  Fagin  made  a  bed  for  his  sick  com- 
panion out  of  the  straw  in  the  workroom,  and 
filled  empty  blacking  bottles  with  hot  water  all 
day.  When  the  evening  came,  and  Dickens  was 
somewhat  recovered.  Bob  Fagin  insisted  on  es- 
corting the  boy  home  to  his  father.  The  situa- 
tion w^as  as  poignant  as  a  sort  of  tragic  farce. 
Fagin  in  his  wooden-headed  chivalry  would  have 
died  in  order  to  take  Dickens  to  his  family;  Dick- 

38 


THE    BOYHOOD    OF    DICKENS 

ens  In  his  bitter  gentility  would  have  died  rather 
than  let  Fagin  know  that  his  family  were  In  the 
Marshalsea.  So  these  two  young  Idiots  tramped 
the  tedious  streets,  both  stubborn,  both  suffering 
for  an  Idea.  The  advantage  certainly  was  with 
Fagin,  who  was  suffering  for  a  Christian  compas- 
sion, while  Dickens  was  suffering  for  a  pagan 
pride.  At  last  Dickens  flung  off  his  friend  with 
desperate  farewell  and  thanks,  and  dashed  up  the 
steps  of  a  strange  house  on  the  Surrey  side.  He 
knocked  and  rang  as  Bob  Fagin,  his  benefactor 
and  his  Incubus,  disappeared  round  the  corner. 
And  when  the  servant  came  to  open  the  door,  he 
asked,  apparently  with  gravity,  whether  Mr.  Rob- 
ert Fagin  lived  there.  It  is  a  strange  touch.  The 
Immortal  Dickens  woke  In  him  for  an  Instant  In 
that  last  wild  joke  of  that  weary  evening.  Next 
morning,  however,  he  was  again  well  enough  to 
make  himself  111  again,  and  the  wheels  of  the 
great  factory  went  on.  They  manufactured  a 
number  of  bottles  of  Warren's  Blacking,  and  In 
the  course  of  the  process  they  manufactured  also 
the  greatest  optimist  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

This  boy  who  dropped  down  groaning  at  his 
work,  who  was  hungry  four  or  five  times  a  week, 
whose  best  feelings  and  worst  feelings  were  alike 
flayed  alive,  was  the  man  on  whom  two  genera- 

39 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

tlons  of  comfortable  critics  have  visited  the  com- 
plaint that  his  view  of  life  was  too  rosy  to  be 
anything  but  unreal.  Afterwards,  and  in  its 
proper  place,  I  shall  speak  of  what  Is  called  the 
optimism  of  Dickens,  and  of  whether  it  was  really 
too  cheerful  or  too  smooth.  But  this  boyhood 
of  his  may  be  recorded  now  as  a  mere  fact.  If 
he  was  too  happy,  this  was  where  he  learnt  It. 
If  his  school  of  thought  was  a  vulgar  optimism, 
this  Is  where  he  went  to  school.  If  he  learnt  to 
whitewash  the  universe,  It  was  In  a  blacking  fac- 
tory that  he  learnt  It. 

As  a  fact,  there  Is  no  shred  of  evidence  to  show 
that  those  who  have  had  sad  experiences  tend  to 
have  a  sad  philosophy.  There  are  numberless 
points  upon  which  Dickens  Is  spiritually  at  one 
with  the  poor,  that  Is,  with  the  great  mass  of  man- 
kind. But  there  Is  no  point  In  which  he  Is  more 
perfectly  at  one  with  them  than  In  showing  that 
there  Is  no  kind  of  connection  between  a  man  being 
unhappy  and  a  man  being  pessimistic.  Sorrow  and 
pessimism  are  Indeed,  In  a  sense,  opposite  things, 
since  sorrow  Is  founded  on  the  value  of  something, 
and  pessimism  upon  the  value  of  nothing.  And 
in  practice  we  find  that  those  poets  or  political 
leaders  who  come  from  the  people,  and  whose  ex- 
periences have  really  been  searching  and  cruel,  are 

40 


THE    BOYHOOD    OF    DICKENS 

the  most  sanguine  people  in  the  world.  These 
men  out  of  the  old  agony  are  always  optimists; 
they  are  sometimes  offensive  optimists.  A  man 
like  Robert  Burns,  whose  father  (like  Dickens's 
father)  goes  bankrupt,  whose  whole  life  is  a  strug- 
gle against  miserable  external  powers  and  internal 
weaknesses  yet  more  miserable — a  man  whose  life 
begins  grey  and  ends  black — Burns  does  not 
merely  sing  about  the  goodness  of  life,  he  posi- 
tively rants  and  cants  about  it.  Rousseau,  whom 
all  his  friends  and  acquaintances  treated  almost 
as  badly  as  he  treated  them — Rousseau  does  not 
grow  merely  eloquent,  he  grows  gushing  and  sen- 
timental, about  the  inherent  goodness  of  human 
nature.  Charles  Dickens,  who  was  most  miser- 
able at  the  receptive  age  when  most  people  are 
most  happy,  is  afterwards  happy  when  all  men 
weep.  Circumstances  break  men's  bones;  it  has 
never  been  shown  that  they  break  men's  optimism. 
These  great  popular  leaders  do  all  kinds  of  des- 
perate things  under  the  immediate  scourge  of 
tragedy.  They  become  drunkards;  they  become 
demagogues ;  they  become  morpho-maniacs.  They 
never  become  pessimists.  Most  unquestionably 
there  are  ragged  and  unhappy  men  whom  we  could 
easily  understand  being  pessimists.  But  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  they  are  not  pessimists.     Most  unques- 

41 


CPARLES     DICKENS 

tlonably  there  are  whole  dim  hordes  of  humanity 
whom  we  should  promptly  pardon  if  they  cursed 
God.  But  they  don't.  The  pessimists  are  aris- 
tocrats like  Byron;  the  men  who  curse  God  are 
aristocrats  like  Swinburne.  But  when  those  who 
starve  and  suffer  speak  for  a  moment,  they  do  not 
profess  merely  an  optimism,  they  profess  a  cheap 
optimism ;  they  are  too  poor  to  afford  a  dear  one. 
They  cannot  indulge  in  any  detailed  or  merely 
logical  defence  of  life;  that  would  be  to  delay 
the  enjoyment  of  it.  These  higher  optimists,  of 
whom  Dickens  was  one,  do  not  approve  of  the 
universe;  they  do  not  even  admire  the  universe; 
they  fall  in  love  with  it.  They  embrace  life  too 
closely  to  criticize  or  even  to  see  it.  Existence  to 
such  men  has  the  wild  beauty  of  a  woman,  and 
those  love  her  with  most  intensity  who  love  her 
with  least  cause. 


41 


CHAPTER    III 
THE  YOUTH  OF  DICKENS 

There  are  popular  phrases  so  picturesque  that 
even  when  they  are  Intentionally  funny  they  are 
unintentionally  poetical.  I  remember,  to  take  one 
Instance  out  of  many,  hearing  a  heated  Secularist 
In  Hyde  Park  apply  to  some  parson  or  other  the 
exquisite  expression,  "  a  sky-pilot."  Subsequent 
Inquiry  has  taught  me  that  the  term  Is  Intended 
to  be  comic  and  even  contemptuous;  but  In  that 
first  freshness  of  It  I  went  home  repeating  It  to 
myself  like  a  new  poem.  Few  of  the  pious  legends 
have  conceived  so  strange  and  yet  celestial  a  pict- 
ure as  this  of  the  pilot  In  the  sky,  leaning  on  his 
helm  above  the  empty  heavens,  and  carrying  his 
cargo  of  souls  higher  than  the  loneliest  cloud. 
The  phrase  Is  like  a  lyric  of  Shelley.  Or,  to  take 
another  Instance  from  another  language,  the 
French  have  an  Incomparable  Idiom  for  a  boy 
playing  truant:  "  II  fait  I'ecole  bulssonnlere  " — he 
goes  to  the  bushy  school,  or  the  school  among  the 
bushes.  How  admirably  this  accidental  expres- 
sion, "  the  bushy  school  "  (not  to  be  lightly  con- 

43 


i>; 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

founded  with  the  Art  School  at  Bushey) — how 
admirably  this  ^'  bushy  school  "  expresses  half  the 
modern  notions  of  a  more  natural  education !  The 
two  words  express  the  whole  poetry  of  Words- 
worth, the  whole  philosophy  of  Thoreau,  and  are 
quite  as  good  literature  as  either. 

Now,  among  a  million  of  such  scraps  of  In- 
spired slang  there  Is  one  which  describes  a  certain 
side  of  Dickens  better  than  pages  of  explanation. 
The  phrase,  appropriately  enough,  occurs  at  least 
once  In  his  works,  and  that  on  a  fitting  occasion. 
When  Job  Trotter  Is  sent  by  Sam  on  a  wild  chase 
after  Mr.  Perker,  the  solicitor,  Mr.  Perker's  clerk 
condoles  with  Job  upon  the  lateness  of  the  hour, 
and  the  fact  that  all  habitable  places  are  shut  up. 
"  My  friend,"  says  Mr.  Perker's  clerk,  "  youVe 
got  the  key  of  the  street."  Mr.  Perker's  clerk, 
who  was  a  flippant  and  scornful  young  man,  may 
perhaps  be  pardoned  If  he  used  this  expression  In 
a  flippant  and  scornful  sense;  but  let  us  hope  that 
Dickens  did  not.  Let  us  hope  that  Dickens  saw 
the  strange,  yet  satisfying,  imaginative  justice  of 
the  words;  for  Dickens  himself  had,  in  the  most 
sacred  and  serious  sense  of  the  term,  the  key  of  the 
street.  When  we  shut  out  anything,  we  are  shut 
out  of  that  thing.  When  we  shut  out  the  street, 
we  are  shut  out  of  the  street.     Few  of  us  under- 

44 


THE    YOUTH    OF    DICKENS 

stand  the  street.  Even  when  we  step  into  it,  we 
step  into  it  doubtfully,  as  into  a  house  or  room  of 
strangers.  Few  of  us  see  through  the  shining 
riddle  of  the  street,  the  strange  folk  that  belong 
to  the  street  only — the  street-walker  or  the  street 
arab,  the  nomads  who,  generation  after  genera- 
tion, have  kept  their  ancient  secrets  in  the  full 
blaze  of  the  sun.  Of  the  street  at  night  many  of 
us  know  even  less.  The  street  at  night  is  a  great 
house  locked  up.  But  Dickens  had,  if  ever  man 
had,  the  key  of  the  street.  His  earth  was  the 
stones  of  the  street;  his  stars  were  the  lamps  of 
^Hhe  street ;  his  hero  was  the  man  in  the  street.  He 
could  open  the  inmost  door  of  his  house — the  door 
that  leads  into  that  secret  passage  which  Is  lined 
with  houses  and  roofed  with  stars. 

This  silent  transformation  into  a  citizen  of  the 
street  took  place  during  those  dark  days  of  boy- 
hood, when  Dickens  was  drudging  at  the  factory. 
Whenever  he  had  done  drudging,  he  had  no  other 
resource  but  drifting,  and  he  drifted  over  half 
London.  He  was  a  dreamy  child,  thinking  mostly 
of  his  own  dreary  prospects.  Yet  he  saw  and 
remembered  much  of  the  streets  and  squares  he 
passed.  Indeed,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  went  the 
right  way  to  work  unconsciously  to  do  so.  He 
did  not  go  in  for  "  observation,"  a  priggish  habit; 

45 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

he  did  not  look  at  Charing  Cross  to  improve  his 
mind  or  count  the  lamp-posts  in  Holborn  to  prac- 
tise his  arithmetic.  But  unconsciously  he  made 
all  these  places  the  scenes  of  the  monstrous  drama 
in  his  miserable  little  soul.  He  walked  in  dark- 
ness under  the  lamps  of  Holborn,  and  was  cruci- 
fied at  Charing  Cross.  So  for  him  ever  after- 
wards these  places  had  the  beauty  that  only  be- 
longs to  battlefields.  For  our  memory  never  fixes 
the  facts  which  we  have  merely  observed.  The 
only  way  to  remember  a  place  for  ever  is  to  live 
in  the  place  for  an  hour;  and  the  only  way  to  live 
in  the  place  for  an  hour  is  to  forget  the  place  for 
an  hour.  The  undying  scenes  we  can  all  see  if 
we  shut  our  eyes  are  not  the  scenes  that  we  have 
stared  at  under  the  direction  of  guide-books;  the 
scenes  we  see  are  the  scenes  at  which  we  did  not 
look  at  all — the  scenes  in  which  we  walked  when 
we  were  thinking  about  something  else — about  a 
sin,  or  a  love  affair,  or  some  childish  sorrow.  We 
can  see  the  background  now  because  we  did  not 
see  it  then.  So  Dickens  did  not  stamp  these  places 
on  his  mind;  he  stamped  his  mind  on  these  places. 
For  him  ever  afterwards  these  streets  were  mor- 
tally romantic;  they  were  dipped  in  the  purple 
dyes  of  youth  and  its  tragedy,  and  rich  with  ir- 
revocable sunsets. 

46 


THE    YOUTH     OF    DICKENS 

Herein  Is  the  whole  secret  of  that  eerie  realism 
with  which  Dickens  could  always  vitalize  some 
Aiark  or  dull  corner  of  London.  There  are  details 
in  the  Dickens  descriptions — a  window,  or  a  rail- 
ing, or  the  keyhole  of  a  door — which  he  endows 
with  demoniac  life.  The  things  seem  more  actual 
than  things  really  are.  Indeed,  that  degree  of 
realism  does  not  exist  in  reality:  It  is  the  unbear- 
able realism  of  a  dream.  And  this  kind  of  real- 
Ism  can  only  be  gained  by  walking  dreamily  In  a 
place ;  it  cannot  be  gained  by  walking  observantly. 
Dickens  himself  has  given  a  perfect  Instance  of 
how  these  nightmare  minutiae  grew  upon  him  In 
his  trance  of  abstraction.  He  mentions  among  the 
coffee-shops  into  which  he  crept  in  those  wretched 
days  "  one  in  St.  Martin's  Lane,  of  which  I  only 
recollect  that  it  stood  near  the  church,  and  that 
in  the  door  there  was  an  oval  glass  plate  with 
*  COFFEE  ROOM'  painted  on  It,  addressed 
towards  the  street.  If  I  ever  find  myself  In  a  very 
different  kind  of  coffee-room  now,  but  where  there 
is  such  an  Inscription  on  glass,  and  read  It  back- 
wards on  the  wrong  side,  MOOR  EEFFOC  (as 
I  often  used  to  do  then  In  a  dismal  reverie),  a 
shock  goes  through  my  blood."  That  wild  word, 
"  Moor  Eeffoc,"  Is  the  motto  of  all  effective  real- 
Ism!  It  Is  the  masterpiece  of  the  good  realistic 

47 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

principle — the  principle  that  the  most  fantastic 
thing  of  all  Is  often  the  precise  fact.  And  that 
elvish  kind  of  realism  Dickens  adopted  every- 
where. His  world  was  alive  with  Inanimate  ob- 
jects. The  date  on  the  door  danced  over  Mr. 
Grewglus,  the  knocker  grinned  at  Mr.  Scrooge, 
the  Roman  on  the  ceiling  pointed  down  at  Mr. 
Tulklnghorn,  the  elderly  armchair  leered  at  Tom 
Smart — these  are  all  moor  eeffocish  things.  A 
man  sees  them  because  he  does  not  look  at  them. 
And  so  the  little  Dickens  Dickenslzed  London. 
He  prepared  the  way  for  all  his  personages.  Into 
whatever  cranny  of  our  city  his  characters  might 
crawl,  Dickens  had  been  there  before  them.  How- 
ever wild  were  the  events  he  narrated  as  outside 
him,  they  could  not  be  wilder  than  the  things  that 
had  gone  on  within.  However  queer  a  character 
of  Dickens  might  be,  he  could  hardly  be  queerer 
than  Dickens  was.  The  whole  secret  of  his  after- 
writings  Is  sealed  up  In  those  silent  years  of  which 
no  written  word  remains.  Those  years  did  him 
harm  perhaps,  as  his  biographer,  Forster,  has 
thoughtfully  suggested,  by  sharpening  a  certain 
fierce  Individualism  In  him  which  once  or  twice 
during  his  genial  life  flashed  like  a  half-hidden 
knife.  He  was  always  generous;  but  things  had 
gone  too  hardly  with  him  for  him  to  be  always 

48 


THE    YOUTH     OF     DICKENS 

easy-going.  He  was  always  kind-hearted;  he  was 
not  always  good-humoured.  Those  years  may 
also,  in  their  strange  mixture  of  morbidity  and 
reality,  have  increased  in  him  his  tendency  to  ex- 
aggeration. But  we  can  scarcely  lament  this  in 
a  literary  sense;  exaggeration  is  almost  the  defini-^ 
tion  of  art — and  It  Is  entirely  the  definition  of] 
Dickens's  art.  Those  years  may  have  given  him 
many  moral  and  mental  wounds,  from  which  he 
never  recovered.  But  they  gave  him  the  key  of 
the  street. 

There  Is  a  weird  contradiction  In  the  soul  of 
the  born  optimist.  He  can  be  happy  and  unhappy 
at  the  same  time.  With  Dickens  the  practical 
depression  of  his  life  at  this  time  did  nothing  to 
prevent  him  from  laying  up  those  hilarious  memo- 
ries of  which  all  his  books  are  made.  No  doubt 
he  was  genuinely  unhappy  In  the  poor  place  where 
his  mother  kept  school.  Nevertheless  It  was  there 
that  he  noticed  the  unfathomable  qualntness  of  the 
little  servant  whom  he  made  Into  the  Marchioness. 
No  doubt  he  was  comfortless  enough  at  the  board- 
ing-house of  Mrs.  Roylance;  but  he  perceived 
with  a  dreadful  joy  that  Mrs.  Roylance's  name 
was  PIpchin.  There  seems  to  be  no  incompatibil- 
ity between  taking  In  tragedy  and  giving  out 
comedy;  they  are  able  to  run  parallel  In  the  same 

49 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

personality.  One  Incident  which  he  described  in 
his  unfinished  "  autobiography,"  and  which  he 
afterw^ards  transferred  almost  verbatim  to  David 
Copperfield,  was  peculiarly  rich  and  impressive. 
It  was  the  inauguration  of  a  petition  to  the  King 
for  a  bounty,  drawn  up  by  a  committee  of  the 
prisoners  in  the  Marshalsea,  a  committee  of  which 
Dickens's  father  was  the  president,  no  doubt  in 
virtue  of  his  oratory,  and  also  the  scribe,  no  doubt 
in  virtue  of  his  genuine  love  of  literary  flights. 

"  As  many  of  the  principal  ofl'icers  of  this  body 
as  could  be  got  into  a  small  room  without  filling 
it  up,  supported  him  In  front  of  the  petition;  and 
my  old  friend.  Captain  Porter  (who  had  washed 
himself  to  do  honour  to  so  solemn  an  occasion), 
stationed  himself  close  to  It,  to  read  It  to  all  who 
were  unacquainted  with  Its  contents.  The  door 
was  then  thrown  open,  and  they  began  to  come  in 
in  a  long  file;  several  waiting  on  the  landing  out- 
side, while  one  entered,  aflixed  his  signature,  and 
went  out.  To  everybody  In  succession  Captain 
Porter  said,  *  Would  you  like  to  hear  It  read  '  ? 
If  he  weakly  showed  the  least  disposition  to  hear 
It,  Captain  Porter  In  a  loud,  sonorous  voice  gave 
him  every  word  of  It.  I  remember  a  certain 
luscious  roll  he  gave  to  such  words  as  '  Majesty — 
Gracious  Majesty — Your  Gracious  Majesty's  un- 

50 


THE    YOUTH     OF    DICKENS 

fortunate  subjects — Your  Majesty's  well-known 
munificence,'  as  If  the  words  were  something  real 
in  his  mouth  and  delicious  to  taste :  my  poor  father 
meanwhile  listening  with  a  little  of  an  author's 
vanity  and  contemplating  (not  severely)  the  spike 
on  the  opposite  wall.  Whatever  was  comical  or 
pathetic  in  this  scene,  I  sincerely  believe  I  per- 
ceived in  my  corner,  whether  I  demonstrated  it 
or  not,  quite  as  well  as  I  should  perceive  It  now. 
I  made  out  my  own  little  character  and  story  for 
every  man  who  put  his  name  to  the  sheet  of 
paper." 

Here  we  see  very  plainly  that  Dickens  did  not 
merely  look  back  in  after  days  and  see  that  these 
humours  had  been  delightful.  He  was  delighted 
at  the  same  moment  that  he  was  desperate.  The 
two  opposite  things  existed  In  him  simultaneously, 
and  each  in  Its  full  strength.  His  soul  was  not  a 
mixed  colour  like  grey  and  purple,  caused  by  no 
component  colour  being  quite  Itself.  His  soul  was 
like  a  shot  silk  of  black  and  crimson,  a  shot  silk  of 
misery  and  joy. 

Seen  from  the  outside,  his  little  pleasures  and 
extravagances  seem  more  pathetic  than  his  grief. 
Once  the  solemn  little  figure  went  Into  a  public- 
house  In  Parliament  Street,  and  addressed  the  man 
behind  the  bar  In  the  following  terms — *'  What  is 

51 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

your  very  best — the  VERY  best  ale  a  glass?" 
The  man  replied,  "  Twopence."  "  Then,"  said 
the  Infant,  "  just  draw  me  a  glass  of  that,  If  you 
please,  with  a  good  head  to  It."  "  The  landlord," 
says  Dickens,  In  telling  the  story,  ^'  looked  at  me 
In  return  over  the  bar  from  head  to  foot  with  a 
strange  smile  on  his  face;  Instead  of  drawing  the 
beer  looked  round  the  screen  and  said  something 
to  his  wife,  who  came  out  from  behind  It  with  her 
work  In  her  hand  and  joined  him  In  surveying  me. 
.  .  .  They  asked  me  a  good  many  questions  as  to 
what  my  name  was,  how  old  I  was,  where  I  lived, 
how  I  was  employed,  etc.,  etc.  To  all  of  which, 
that  I  might  commit  nobody,  I  invented  appropri- 
ate answers.  They  served  me  with  the  ale,  though 
I  suspect  it  was  not  the  strongest  on  the  premises ; 
and  the  landlord's  wife,  opening  the  little  half- 
door,  and  bending  down,  gave  me  a  kiss."  Here 
he  touches  that  other  side  of  common  life  which 
he  was  chiefly  to  champion;  he  was  to  show  that 
there  is  no  ale  like  the  ale  of  a  poor  man's  festival, 
and  no  pleasures  like  the  pleasures  of  the  poor. 
At  other  places  of  refreshment  he  was  yet  more 
majestic.  ''  I  remember,"  he  says,  "  tucking  my 
own  bread  (which  I  had  brought  from  home  in  the 
morning)  under  my  arm,  wrapt  up  in  a  piece  of 
paper  like  a  book,  and  going  into  the  best  dlnlng- 

52 


THE    YOUTH     OF    DICKENS 

room  In  Johnson's  Alamode  Beef  House  in  Clare 
Court,  Drury  Lane,  and  magnificently  ordering  a 
small  plate  of  a-la-mode  beef  to  eat  with  it.  What 
the  waiter  thought  of  such  a  strange  little  appari- 
tion coming  in  all  alone  I  don't  know;  but  I  can 
see  him  now  staring  at  me  as  I  ate  my  dinner,  and 
bringing  up  the  other  waiter  to  look.  I  gave  him 
a  halfpenny,  and  I  wish,  now,  that  he  hadn't 
taken  it." 

For  the  boy  individually  the  prospect  seemed 
to  be  growing  drearier  and  drearier.  This  phrase 
indeed  hardly  expresses  the  fact;  for,  as  he  felt  it. 
It  was  not  so  much  a  run  of  worsening  luck  as  the 
closing  in  of  a  certain  and  quiet  calamity  like  the 
coming  on  of  twilight  and  dark.  He  felt  that  he 
would  die  and  be  buried  In  blacking.  Through 
all  this  he  does  not  seem  to  have  said  much  to  his 
parents  of  his  distress.  They  who  were  in  prison 
had  certainly  a  much  jollier  time  than  he  who  was 
free.  But  of  all  the  strange  ways  In  which  the 
human  being  proves  that  he  Is  not  a  rational  being, 
whatever  else  he  Is,  no  case  is  so  mysterious  and 
unaccountable  as  the  secrecy  of  childhood.  We 
learn  of  the  cruelty  of  some  school  or  child-factory 
from  journalists;  we  learn  It  from  Inspectors,  we 
learn  It  from  doctors,  we  learn  It  even  from  shame- 
stricken  schoolmasters  and  repentant  sweaters ;  but 

53 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

we  never  learn  It  from  the  children;  we  never 
learn  it  from  the  victims.  It  would  seem  as  if  a 
living  creature  had  to  be  taught,  like  an  art  of 
culture,  the  art  of  crying  out  when  It  Is  hurt.  It 
would  seem  as  If  patience  were  the  natural  thing; 
It  would  seem  as  If  Impatience  were  an  accomplish- 
ment like  whist.  Howev^er  this  may  be.  It  Is  wholly 
certain  that  Dickens  might  have  drudged  and  died 
drudging,  and  burled  the  unborn  Pickwick,  but 
for  an  external  accident. 

He  was,  as  has  been  said,  In  the  habit  of  visit- 
ing his  father  at  the  Marshalsea  every  week.  The 
talks  between  the  two  must  have  been  a  comedy, 
at  once  more  cruel  and  more  delicate  than  Dickens 
ever  described.  Meredith  might  picture  the  com- 
parison between  the  child  whose  troubles  were  so 
childish,  but  who  felt  them  like  a  damned  spirit, 
and  the  middle-aged  man  whose  trouble  was  final 
f  ruin,  and  who  felt  it  no  more  than  a  baby.  Once, 
'^  it  would  appear,  the  boy  broke  down  altogether — 
perhaps  under  the  unbearable  buoyancy  of  his  ora- 
torical papa — and  Implored  to  be  freed  from  the 
factory — Implored  it,  I  fear,  with  a  precocious  and 
almost  horrible  eloquence.  The  old  optimist  was 
astounded — too  much  astounded  to  do  anything  in 
particular.  Whether  the  incident  had  really  any- 
thing to  do  with  what  followed  cannot  be  decided, 

54 


THE    YOUTH     OF    DICKENS 

but  ostensibly  It  had  not.  Ostensibly  the  cause  of 
Charles's  ultimate  liberation  was  a  quarrel  between 
his  father  and  Lamert,  the  head  of  the  factory. 
Dickens  the  elder  (who  had  at  last  left  the  Mar- 
shalsea)  could  no  doubt  conduct  a  quarrel  with  the 
magnificence  of  MIcawber;  the  result  of  this  talent, 
at  any  rate,  was  to  leave  Mr.  Lamert  in  a  tower- 
ing rage.  He  had  a  stormy  Interview  with  Charles, 
In  which  he  tried  to  be  good-tempered  to  the  boy, 
but  could  hardly  master  his  tongue  about  the  boy's 
father.  Finally  he  told  him  he  must  go,  and  with 
every  observance  the  little  creature  was  solemnly 
expelled  from  hell. 

His  mother,  with  a  touch  of  strange  harshness, 
was  for  patching  up  the  quarrel  and  sending  him 
back.  Perhaps,  with  the  fierce  feminine  responsi- 
bility, she  felt  that  the  first  necessity  was  to  keep 
the  family  out  of  debt.  But  old  John  Dickens  put 
his  foot  down  here — put  his  foot  down  with  that 
ringing  but  very  rare  decision  with  which  (once  In 
ten  years,  and  often  on  some  trivial  matter)  the 
weakest  man  will  overwhelm  the  strongest  woman. 
The  boy  was  miserable;  the  boy  was  clever;  the 
boy  should  go  to  school.  The  boy  went  to  school ; 
he  went  to  the  Wellington  House  Academy,  Morn- 
Ington  Place.  It  was  an  odd  experience  for  any 
one  to  go  from  the  world  to  a  school,  Instead  of 

SS 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

going  from  school  to  the  world.  Dickens,  we 
may  say,  had  his  boyhood  after  his  youth.  He 
had  seen  life  at  its  coarsest  before  he  began  his 
training  for  It,  and  knew  the  worst  words  in  the 
English  language  probably  before  the  best.  This 
odd  chronology,  it  will  be  remembered,  he  retained 
in  his  semi-autobiographical  account  of  the  adven- 
tures of  David  Copperfield,  who  went  into  the 
business  of  Murdstone  and  Grinby's  before  he 
went  to  the  school  kept  by  Dr.  Strong.  David 
Copperfield,  also,  went  to  be  carefully  prepared 
for  a  world  that  he  had  seen  already.  Outside 
David  Copperfield,  the  records  of  Dickens  at  this 
time  reduce  themselves  to  a  few  glimpses  pro- 
vided by  accidental  companions  of  his  schooldays, 
and  little  can  be  deduced  from  them  about  his 
personality  beyond  a  general  impression  of  sharp- 
ness and,  perhaps,  of  bravado,  of  bright  eyes  and 
bright  speeches.  Probably  the  young  creature  was 
recuperating  himself  for  his  misfortunes,  was  mak- 
ing the  most  of  his  liberty,  was  flapping  the  wings 
of  that  wild  spirit  that  had  just  not  been  broken. 
We  hear  of  things  that  sound  suddenly  juvenile 
after  his  maturer  troubles,  of  a  secret  language 
sounding  like  mere  gibberish,  and  of  a  small  thea- 
tre, with  paint  and  red  fire,  such  as  that  which 
Stevenson  loved.     It  was  not  an  accident  that 

56 


THE    YOUTH     OF    DICKENS 

Dickens  and  Stevenson  loved  It.  It  Is  a  stage  un- 
sulted  for  psychological  realism;  the  cardboard 
characters  cannot  analyze  each  other  with  any  ef- 
fect. But  It  Is  a  stage  almost  divinely  suited  for 
making  surroundings,  for  making  that  situation 
and  background  which  belong  peculiarly  to  ro- 
mance. A  toy  theatre,  In  fact,  Is  the  opposite  of 
private  theatricals.  In  the  latter  you  can  do  any- 
thing with  the  people  If  you  do  not  ask  much  from 
the  scenery;  in  the  former  you  can  do  anything  In 
scenery  If  you  do  not  ask  much  from  the  people. 
In  a  toy  theatre  you  could  hardly  manage  a  mod- 
ern dialogue  on  marriage,  but  the  Day  of  Judg- 
ment would  be  quite  easy. 

After  leaving  school,  Dickens  found  employ- 
ment as  a  clerk  to  Mr.  Blackmore,  a  solicitor,  as 
one  of  those  Inconspicuous  under-clerks  whom  he 
afterwards  turned  to  many  grotesque  uses.  Here, 
no  doubt,  he  met  Lowten  and  Swiveller,  Chuck- 
ster  and  Wobbler,  In  so  far  as  such  sacred  creatures 
ever  had  embodiments  on  this  lower  earth.  But 
It  Is  typical  of  him  that  he  had  no  fancy  at  all  to 
remain  a  solicitor's  clerk.  The  resolution  to  rise 
which  had  glowed  In  him  even  as  a  dawdling  boy, 
when  he  gazed  at  Gad's-hlll,  which  had  been 
darkened  but  not  quite  destroyed  by  his  fall  Into 
the  factory  routine,  which  had  been  released  again 

57 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

by  his  return  to  normal  boyhood  and  the  bounda- 
ries of  school,  was  not  likely  to  content  itself  now 
with  the  copying  out  of  agreements.  He  set  to 
work,  without  any  advice  or  help,  to  learn  to  be  a 
reporter.  He  worked  all  day  at  law,  and  then 
all  night  at  shorthand.  It  is  an  art  which  can  only 
be  effected  by  time,  and  he  had  to  effect  it  by  over- 
time. But  learning  the  thing  under  every  disad- 
vantage, without  a  teacher,  without  the  possibility 
of  concentration  or  complete  mental  force,  without 
ordinary  human  sleep,  he  made  himself  one  of  the 
most  rapid  reporters  then  alive.  There  is  a  curi- 
ous contrast  between  the  casualness  of  the  mental 
training  to  which  his  parents  and  others  subjected 
him  and  the  savage  seriousness  of  the  training  to 
which  he  subjected  himself.  Somebody  once  asked 
old  John  Dickens  where  his  son  Charles  was  edu- 
cated. *'  Well,  really,"  said  the  great  creature,  in 
his  spacious  way,  "  he  may  be  said — ah — to  have 
educated  himself."    He  might  indeed. 

This  practical  Intensity  of  Dickens  is  worth  our 
dwelling  on,  because  It  Illustrates  an  elementary 
antithesis  in  his  character,  or  what  appears  as  an 
antithesis  In  our  modern  popular  psychology.  We 
are  always  talking  about  strong  men  against  weak 
men;  but  Dickens  was  not  only  both  a  weak  man 
and  a  strong  man,  he  was  a  very  weak  man  and 

58 


THE    YOUTH    OF    DICKENS 

also  a  very  strong  man.  He  was  everything  that 
we  currently  call  a  weak  man ;  he  was  a  man  hung 
on  wires;  he  was  a  man  who  might  at  any  moment 
cry  like  a  child;  he  was  so  sensitive  to  criticism 
that  one  may  say  that  he  lacked  a  skin ;  he  was  so 
nervous  that  he  allowed  great  tragedies  in  his  life 
to  arise  only  out  of  nerves.  But  in  the  matter 
where  all  ordinary  strong  men  are  miserably  weak 
— in  the  matter  of  concentrated  toil  and  clear  pur- 
pose and  unconquerable  worldly  courage — he  was 
like  a  straight  sword.  Mrs.  Carlyle,  who  in  her 
human  epithets  often  hit  the  right  nail  so  that  it 
rang,  said  of  him  once,  "  He  has  a  face  made  of 
steel."  This  was  probably  felt  in  a  flash  when  she 
saw.  In  some  social  crowd,  the  clear,  eager  face  of 
Dickens  cutting  through  those  near  him  like  a 
knife.  Any  people  who  had  met  him  from  year  to 
year  would  each  year  have  found  a  man  weakly 
troubled  about  his  worldly  decline;  and  each  year 
they  would  have  found  him  higher  up  in  the  world. 
His  was  a  character  very  hard  for  any  man  of 
slow  and  placable  temperament  to  understand;  he 
was  the  character  whom  anybody  can  hurt  and  no- 
body can  kill. 

When  he  began  to  report  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons he  was  still  only  nineteen.  His  father,  who 
had  been  released  from  his  prison  a  short  time 

59 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

before  Charles  had  been  released  from  his,  had 
also  become,  among  many  other  things,  a  reporter. 
But  old  John  Dickens  could  enjoy  doing  anything 
without  any  particular  aspiration  after  doing  it 
well.  But  Charles  was  of  a  very  different  temper. 
He  was,  as  I  have  said,  consumed  with  an  endur- 
ing and  almost  angry  thirst  to  excel.  He  learnt 
shorthand  with  a  dark  self-devotion  as  if  It  were 
a  sacred  hieroglyph.  Of  this  self-instruction,  as 
of  everything  else,  he  has  left  humorous  and  Illu- 
minating phrases.  He  describes  how,  after  he  had 
learnt  the  whole  exact  alphabet,  "  there  then  ap- 
peared a  procession  of  new  horrors,  called  arbi- 
trary characters — the  most  despotic  characters  I 
have  ever  known;  who  Insisted,  for  Instance,  that 
a  thing  like  the  beginning  of  a  cobweb  meant 
*  expectation,'  and  that  a  pen-and-ink  skyrocket 
stood  for  '  disadvantageous.'  "  He  concludes,  "  It 
was  almost  heartbreaking."  But  It  is  significant 
that  somebody  else,  a  colleague  of  his,  concluded, 
''  There  never  was  such  a  shorthand  writer." 

Dickens  succeeded  In  becoming  a  shorthand 
writer;  succeeded  In  becoming  a  reporter;  suc- 
ceeded ultimately  In  becoming  a  highly  effective 
journalist.  He  was  appointed  as  a  reporter  of  the 
speeches  In  Parliament,  first  by  The  True  Sun,  then 
by  The  Mirror  of  Parliament,  and  last  by  The 

60 


THE    YOUTH    OF    DICKENS 

Morning  Chronicle.  He  reported  the  speeches 
very  well,  and  If  we  must  analyze  his  Internal 
opinions,  much  better  than  they  deserved.  For  It 
must  be  remembered  that  this  lad  went  into  the 
reporter's  gallery  full  of  the  triumphant  Radical- 
ism which  was  then  the  rising  tide  of  the  world. 
He  was,  It  must  be  confessed,  very  little  overpow- 
ered by  the  dignity  of  the  Mother  of  Parliaments: 
he  regarded  the  House  of  Commons  much  as  he 
regarded  the  House  of  Lords,  as  a  sort  of  venera- 
ble joke.  It  was,  perhaps,  while  he  watched,  pale 
with  weariness  from  the  reporter's  gallery,  that 
there  sank  Into  him  a  thing  that  never  left  him, 
his  unfathomable  contempt  for  the  British  Con- 
stitution. Then  perhaps  he  heard  from  the  Gov- 
ernment benches  the  Immortal  apologies  of  the 
Circumlocution  Office.  "  Then  would  the  noble 
lord  or  right  honourable  gentleman.  In  whose 
department  It  was  to  defend  the  Circumlocution 
Office,  put  an  orange  in  his  pocket,  and  make  a 
regular  field-day  of  the  occasion.  Then  would  he 
come  down  to  that  house  with  a  slap  upon  the  table 
and  meet  the  honourable  gentleman  foot  to  foot. 
Then  would  he  be  there  to  tell  that  honourable 
gentleman  that  the  Circumlocution  Office  was  not 
only  blameless  in  this  matter,  but  was  commenda- 
ble in  this  matter,  was  extollable  to  the  skies  In 

6i 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

this  matter.  Then  would  he  be  there  to  tell  that 
honourable  gentleman  that  although  the  Circumlo- 
cution Office  was  Invariably  right,  and  wholly 
right,  It  never  was  so  right  as  In  this  matter.  Then 
would  he  be  there  to  tell  the  honourable  gentle- 
man that  It  would  have  been  more  to  his  honour, 
more  to  his  credit,  more  to  his  good  taste,  more 
to  his  good  sense,  more  to  half  the  dictionary  of 
common-places  if  he  had  left  the  Circumlocution 
Office  alone  and  never  approached  this  matter. 
Then  would  he  keep  one  eye  upon  a  coach  or 
crammer  from  the  Circumlocution  Office  below  the 
bar,  and  smash  the  honourable  gentleman  with  the 
Circumlocution  Office  account  of  this  matter.  And 
although  one  of  two  things  always  happened; 
namely,  either  that  the  Circumlocution  Office  had 
nothing  to  say,  and  said  It,  or  that  it  had  some- 
thing to  say  of  which  the  noble  lord  or  right  hon- 
ourable gentleman  blundered  one  half  and  forgot 
the  other;  the  Circumlocution  Office  was  always 
voted  immaculate  by  an  accommodating  majority." 
We  are  now  generally  told  that  Dickens  has  de- 
stroyed these  abuses,  and  that  this  is  no  longer  a 
true  picture  of  public  life.  Such,  at  any  rate,  is 
the  Circumlocution  Office  account  of  this  matter. 
But  Dickens  as  a  good  Radical  would,  I  fancy, 
much  prefer  that  we  should  continue  his  battle 

62 


THE    YOUTH     OF    DICKENS 

than  that  we  should  celebrate  his  triumph;  espe- 
cially when  it  has  not  come.  England  Is  still  ruled 
by  the  great  Barnacle  family.  Parliament  Is  still 
ruled  by  the  great  Barnacle  trinity — the  solemn 
old  Barnacle,  who  knew  that  the  Circumlocution 
Office  was  a  protection,  the  sprightly  young  Bar- 
nacle who  knew  that  it  was  a  fraud,  and  the  be- 
wildered young  Barnacle  who  knew  nothing  about 
It.  From  these  three  types  our  Cabinets  are  still 
exclusively  recruited.  People  talk  of  the  tyrannies 
and  anomalies  which  Dickens  denounced  as  things 
of  the  past  like  the  Star  Chamber.  They  believe 
that  the  days  of  the  old  stupid  optimism  and  the 
old  brutal  Indifference  are  gone  for  ever.  In  truth, 
this  very  belief  is  only  the  continuance  of  the  old 
stupid  optimism  and  the  old  brutal  indifference. 
We  believe  In  a  free  England  and  a  pure  England, 
because  we  still  believe  In  the  Circumlocution 
Office  account  of  this  matter.  Undoubtedly  our 
serenity  Is  wide-spread.  We  believe  that  England 
Is  really  reformed,  we  believe  that  England  Is 
really  democratic,  we  believe  that  English  politics 
are  free  from  corruption.  But  this  general  satis- 
faction of  ours  does  not  show  that  Dickens  has 
beaten  the  Barnacles.  It  only  shows  that  the 
Barnacles  have  beaten  Dickens. 

It  cannot  be  too  often  said,  then,  that  we  must 

63 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

read  Into  young  Dickens  and  his  works  this  old 
Radical  tone  towards  Institutions.  That  tone  was 
a  sort  of  happy  Impatience.  And  when  Dickens 
had  to  listen  for  hours  to  the  speech  of  the  noble 
lord  In  defence  of  the  Circumlocution  Office,  when, 
that  Is,  he  had  to  listen  to  what  he  regarded  as  the 
last  vaporings  of  a  vanishing  oligarchy,  the  Impa- 
tience rather  predominated  over  the  happiness. 
His  Incurably  restless  nature  found  more  pleasure 
in  the  wandering  side  of  journalism.  He  went 
about  wildly  In  post-chaises  to  report  political 
meetings  for  the  Morning  Chronicle.  "  And  what 
gentlemen  they  were  to  serve,"  he  exclaimed,  "  in 
such  things  at  the  old  Morning  Chronicle.  Great 
or  small  It  did  not  matter.  I  have  had  to  charge 
for  half  a  dozen  breakdowns  In  half  a  dozen  times 
as  many  miles.  I  have  had  to  charge  for  the  dam- 
age of  a  great-coat  from  the  drippings  of  a  blaz- 
ing wax  candle,  In  writing  through  the  smallest 
hours  of  the  night  in  a  swift  flying  carriage  and 
pair."  And  again,  "  I  have  often  transcribed  for 
the  printer  from  my  shorthand  notes  important 
public  speeches  in  which  the  strictest  accuracy  was 
required,  and  a  mistake  In  which  would  have  been 
to  a  young  man  severely  compromising,  writing 
on  the  palm  of  my  hand,  by  the  light  of  a  dark 
lantern,    in    a    post-chaise    and    four,    galloping 

64 


THE    YOUTH     OF    DICKENS 

through  a  wild  country  and  through  the  dead  of 
the  night,  at  the  then  surprising  rate  of  fifteen 
miles  an  hour."  The  whole  of  Dickens's  life  goes 
with  the  throb  of  that  nocturnal  gallop.  All  Its 
real  wildness  shot  through  with  an  imaginative 
wickedness  he  afterwards  uttered  In  the  drive  of 
Jonas  Chuzzlewit  through  the  storm. 

All  this  time,  and  Indeed  from  a  time  of  which 
no  measure  can  be  taken,  the  creative  part  of  his 
mind  had  been  In  a  stir  or  even  a  fever.  While 
still  a  small  boy  he  had  written  for  his  own  amuse- 
ment some  sketches  of  queer  people  he  had  met; 
notably,  one  of  his  uncle's  barber,  whose  principal 
hobby  was  pointing  out  what  Napoleon  ought  to 
have  done  In  the  matter  of  military  tactics.  He 
had  a  note-book  full  of  such  sketches.  He  had 
sketches  not  only  of  persons,  but  of  places  which 
were  to  him  almost  more  personal  than  persons. 
In  the  December  of  1833  ^e  published  one  of  these 
fragments  In  the  Old  Monthly  Magazine.  This 
was  followed  by  nine  others  In  the  same  paper,  and 
when  the  paper  (which  was  a  romantically  Radical 
venture,  run  by  a  veteran  soldier  of  Bolivar)  Itself 
collapsed,  Dickens  continued  the  series  in  the 
Evening  Chronicle,  an  off-shoot  of  the  morning 
paper  of  the  same  name.  These  were  the  pieces 
afterwards  published  and  known  as  the  "  Sketches 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

by  Boz  " ;  and  with  them  Dickens  enters  literature. 
He  also  enters  many  other  things  about  this  time; 
he  enters  manhood,  and  among  other  things  mar- 
riage. A  friend  of  his  on  the  Chronicle,  George 
Hogarth,  had  several  daughters.  With  all  of 
them  Dickens  appears  to  have  been  on  terms  of 
great  affection.  This  sketch  is  wholly  literary, 
and  I  do  not  feel  it  necessary  to  do  more  than 
touch  upon  such  incidents  as  his  marriage,  just  as 
I  shall  do  no  more  than  touch  upon  the  tragedy 
that  ultimately  overtook  It.  But  it  may  be  sug- 
gested here  that  the  final  misfortunes  were  in  some 
degree  due  to  the  circumstances  attending  the  origi- 
nal action.  A  very  young  man  fighting  his  way, 
and  excessively  poor,  with  no  memories  for  years 
past  that  were  not  monotonous  and  mean,  and  with 
his  strongest  and  most  personal  memories  quite 
ignominious  and  unendurable,  was  suddenly 
throw^n  into  the  society  of  a  whole  family  of  girls. 
I  think  it  does  not  overstate  his  weakness,  and  I 
think  It  partly  constitutes  his  excuse,  to  say  that 
he  fell  In  love  with  all  of  them.  As  sometimes 
happens  in  the  undeveloped  youth,  an  abstract 
femininity  simply  intoxicated  him.  And  again,  I 
think  we  shall  not  be  mistakenly  accused  of  harsh- 
ness If  we  put  the  point  In  this  way;  that  by  a  kind 
of  accident  he  got  hold  of  the  wrong  sister.     In 

66 


THE    YOUTH     OF    DICKENS 

what  came  afterwards  he  was  enormously  to  blame. 
But  I  do  not  think  that  his  was  a  case  of  cold 
division  from  a  woman  whom  he  had  once  seri- 
ously and  singly  loved.  He  had  been  bewildered 
in  a  burning  haze,  I  will  not  say  even  of  first  love, 
but  of  first  flirtations.  His  wife's  sisters  stimu- 
lated him  before  he  fell  In  love  with  his  wife;  and 
they  continued  to  stimulate  him  long  after  he  had 
quarrelled  with  her  for  ever.  This  view  is  strik- 
ingly supported  by  all  the  details  of  his  attitude 
towards  all  the  other  members  of  the  sacred  house 
of  Hogarth.  One  of  the  sisters  remained,  of 
course,  his  dearest  friend  till  death.  Another  who 
had  died,  he  worshipped  as  a  saint,  and  he  always 
asked  to  be  buried  In  her  grave.  He  was  married 
on  April  2,  1836.  Forster  remarks  that  a  few 
days  before  the  announcement  of  their  marriage 
in  the  Times,  the  same  paper  contained  another 
announcement  that  on  the  31st  would  be  published 
the  first  number  of  a  work  called  "  The  Posthu- 
mous Papers  of  the  Pickwick  Club."  It  is  the 
beginning  of  his  career. 

The  "  Sketches,"  apart  from  splendid  splashes 
of  humour  here  and  there,  are  not  manifestations 
of  the  man  of  genius.  We  might  almost  say  that 
this  book  is  one  of  the  few  books  by  Dickens  which 
would  not,  standing  alone,  have  made  his  fame. 

67 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

And  yet  standing  alone  It  did  make  his  fame.  His 
contemporaries  could  see  a  new  spirit  In  It,  where 
we,  familiar  wnth  the  larger  fruits  of  that  spirit, 
can  only  see  a  continuation  of  the  prosaic  and  al- 
most wooden  wit  of  the  comic  books  of  that  day. 
But  in  any  case  we  should  hardly  look  In  the  man's 
first  book  for  the  fulness  of  his  contribution  to  let- 
ters. Youth  Is  almost  everything  else,  but  It  is 
hardly  ever  original.  We  read  of  young  men 
bursting  on  the  old  world  with  a  new  message. 
But  youth  in  actual  experience  is  the  period  of 
Imitation  and  even  obedience.  Subjectively  Its 
emotions  may  be  furious  and  headlong;  but  Its  only 
external  outcome  Is  a  furious  imitation  and  a  head- 
long obedience.  As  we  grow  older  we  learn  the 
special  thing  we  have  to  do.  As  a  man  goes  on 
towards  the  grave  he  discovers  gradually  a  philos- 
ophy he  can  really  call  fresh,  a  style  he  can  really 
call  his  own,  and  as  he  becomes  an  older  man  he 
becomes  a  newer  writer.  Ibsen,  in  his  youth,  wrote 
almost  classic  plays  about  vikings;  it  was  In  his 
old  age  that  he  began  to  break  windows  and  throw 
fireworks.  The  only  fault,  it  was  said,  of  Brown- 
ing's first  poems  was  that  they  had  "  too  much 
beauty  of  Imagery,  and  too  little  wealth  of 
thought."  The  only  fault,  that  is,  of  Browning's 
first  poems,  was  that  they  were  not  Browning's. 

68 


THE    YOUTH    OF    DICKENS 

In  one  way,  however,  the  "  Sketches  by  Boz  " 
do  stand  out  very  symbolically  in  the  life  of 
Dickens.  They  constitute  in  a  manner  the  dedica- 
tion of  him  to  his  especial  task;  the  sympathetic 
and  yet  exaggerated  painting  of  the  poorer  middle- 
class.  He  was  to  make  men  feel  that  this  dull 
middle-class  was  actually  a  kind  of  elf-land.  But 
here,  again,  the  work  is  rude  and  undeveloped; 
and  this  is  shown  in  the  fact  that  it  is  a  great  deal 
more  exaggerative  than  it  is  sympathetic.  We 
are  not,  of  course,  concerned  with  the  kind  of  peo- 
ple who  say  that  they  wish  that  Dickens  was  more 
refined.  If  those  people  are  ever  refined  it  will 
be  by  fire.  But  there  is  in  this  earliest  work,  an 
element  which  almost  vanished  in  the  later  ones, 
an  element  which  is  typical  of  the  middle-classes 
in  England,  and  which  is  in  a  more  real  sense  to 
be  called  vulgar.  I  mean  that  in  these  little  farces 
there  Is  a  trace.  In  the  author  as  well  as  in  the  char- 
acters, of  that  petty  sense  of  social  precedence,  that 
hub-hub  of  little  unheard-of  oligarchies,  which 
is  the  only  serious  sin  of  the  bourgeoisie  of  Britain. 
It  may  seem  pragmatical,  for  example,  to  instance 
such  a  rowdy  farce  as  the  story  of  Horatio  Spar- 
kins,  which  tells  how  a  tuft-hunting  family  enter- 
tained a  rhetorical  youth  thinking  he  was  a  lord, 
and  found  he  was  a  draper's  assistant.    No  doubt 

69 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

they  were  very  snobbish  in  thinking  that  a  lord 
must  be  eloquent;  but  we  cannot  help  feeling  that 
Dickens  is  almost  equally  snobbish  in  feeling  it 
so  very  funny  that  a  draper's  assistant  should  be 
eloquent.  A  free  man,  one  would  think,  would 
despise  the  family  quite  as  much  if  Horatio  had 
been  a  peer.  Here,  and  here  only,  there  is  just 
a  touch  of  the  vulgarity,  of  the  only  vulgarity  of 
the  world  out  of  which  Dickens  came.  For  the 
only  element  of  lowness  that  there  really  is  in  our 
populace  is  exactly  that  they  are  full  of  superiori- 
ties and  very  conscious  of  class.  Shades,  imper- 
ceptible to  the  eyes  of  others,  but  as  hard  and 
haughty  as  a  Brahmin  caste,  separate  one  kind  of 
charwoman  from  another  kind  of  charwoman. 
Dickens  was  destined  to  show  with  inspired  sym- 
bolism all  the  immense  virtues  of  the  democracy. 
He  was  to  show  them  as  the  most  humorous  part 
of  our  civilization ;  which  they  certainly  are.  He 
was  to  show  them  as  the  most  promptly  and  prac- 
tically compassionate  part  of  our  civilization; 
which  they  certainly  are.  The  democracy  has  a 
hundred  exuberant  good  qualities;  the  democracy 
has  only  one  outstanding  sin — it  is  not  democratic. 


70 


CHAPTER   IV 


"  THE   PICKWICK  PAPERS  " 


Round  the  birth  of  "  Pickwick  "  broke  one  of 
those  literary  quarrels  that  were  too  common  in 
the  life  of  Dickens.  Such  quarrels  indeed  gener- 
ally arose  from  some  definite  mistake  or  misde- 
meanour on  the  part  of  somebody  else;  but  they 
were  also  made  possible  by  an  indefinite  touchiness 
and  susceptibility  in  Dickens  himself.  He  was  so 
sensitive  on  points  of  personal  authorship  and  re- 
sponsibility that  even  his  sacred  sense  of  humour 
deserted  him.  He  turned  people  into  mortal  ene- 
mies whom  he  might  have  turned  very  easily  into 
immortal  jokes.  It  was  not  that  he  was  lawless: 
in  a  sense  it  was  that  he  was  too  legal ;  but  he  did 
not  understand  the  principle  of  de  minimis  non 
curat  lex.  Anybody  could  draw  him;  any  fool 
could  make  a  fool  of  him.  Any  obscure  madman 
who  chose  to  say  that  he  had  written  the  whole  of 
"Martin  Chuzzlewit";  any  penny-a-liner  who 
chose  to  say  that  Dickens  wore  no  shirt  collar  could 
call  forth  the  most  passionate  and  public  denials 
as  of  a  man  pleading  "  not  guilty  "  to  witchcraft 

71 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

or  high  treason.  Hence  the  letters  of  Dickens  are 
filled  with  a  certain  singular  type  of  quarrels  and 
complaints,  quarrels  and  complaints  in  which  one 
cannot  say  that  he  was  on  the  wrong  side,  but 
merely  that  even  in  being  on  the  right  side  he  was 
in  the  wrong  place.  He  was  not  only  a  generous 
man,  he  was  even  a  just  man;  to  have  made  against 
anybody  a  charge  or  claim  which  was  unfair  would 
have  been  insupportable  to  him.  His  weakness 
was  that  he  found  the  unfair  claim  or  charge,  how- 
ever small,  equally  insupportable  when  brought 
against  himself.  No  one  can  say  of  him  that  he 
was  often  wrong;  we  can  only  say  of  him  as  of 
many  pugnacious  people,  that  he  was  too  often 
right. 

The  Incidents  attending  the  inauguration  of  the 
"  Pickwick  Papers  "  are  not,  perhaps,  a  perfect 
example  of  this  trait,  because  Dickens  was  here 
a  hand-to-mouth  journalist,  and  the  blow  might 
possibly  have  been  more  disabling  than  those  struck 
at  him  In  his  days  of  triumph.  But  all  through 
those  days  of  triumph,  and  to  the  day  of  his 
death,  Dickens  took  this  old  tea-cup  tempest 
with  the  most  terrible  gravity,  drew  up  declara- 
tions, called  witnesses,  preserved  pulverizing  docu- 
ments, and  handed  on  to  his  children  the  forgotten 
folly  as  if  It  had  been  a  Highland  feud.    Yet  the 

72 


''THE     PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

unjust  claim  made  on  him  was  so  much  more  ridicu- 
lous even  than  it  was  unjust,  that  It  seems  strange 
that  he  should  have  remembered  It  for  a  month 
except  for  his  amusement.     The  facts  are  simple^ 
and  familiar  to  most  people.     The  publishers — 
Chapman  &  Hall — wished  to  produce  some  kind 
of  serial  with  comic  illustrations  by  a  popular  cari- 
caturist named  Seymour.     This  artist  was  chiefly 
famous  for  his  rendering  of  the  farcical  side  of 
sport,  and  to  suit  this  specialty  It  was  very  vaguely 
suggested  to  Dickens  by  the  publishers  that  he 
should  write  about  a  Nimrod  Club,  or  some  such 
thing,  a  club  of  amateur  sportsmen,  foredoomed 
to  perpetual  Ignominies.     Dickens  objected  In  sub- 
stance upon  two  very  sensible  grounds — first,  that 
sporting  sketches  were  stale ;  and  second,  that  he 
knew  nothing  about  sport.     He  changed  the  idea 
to  that  of  a  general  club  for  travel  and  investiga- 
tion, the  Pickwick  Club,   and  only  retained  one 
fated  sportsman,  Mr.  Winkle,  the  melancholy  rem- 
nant of  the  Nimrod  Club  that  never  was.     The 
first  seven  pictures  appeared  with  the  signature  of 
Seymour  and  the  letterpress  of  Dickens,  and  in 
them  Winkle  and  his  woes  were  fairly,  but  not 
extraordinarily  prominent.    Before  the  eighth  pic- 
ture appeared  Seymour  had  blown  his  brains  out. 
After  a  brief  Interval  of  the  employment  of  a  man 

73 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

named  Buss,  Dickens  obtained  the  assistance  of 
Hoblot  K.  Brown  whom  we  all  call  "  Phiz,"  and 
may  almost,  In  a  certain  sense,  be  said  to  have  gone 
Into  partnership  with  him.  They  were  as  suited 
to  each  other  and  to  the  common  creation  of  a 
unique  thing  as  Gilbert  and  Sullivan.  No  other 
Illustrator  ever  created  the  true  Dickens  characters 
with  the  precise  and  correct  quantum  of  exaggera- 
tion. No  other  Illustrator  ever  breathed  the  true 
Dickens  atmosphere,  In  which  clerks  are  clerks  and 
yet  at  the  same  time  elves. 

To  the  tame  mind  the  above  affair  does  not 
seem  to  offer  anything  very  promising  In  the  way 
of  a  row.  But  Seymour's  widow  managed  to 
evolve  out  of  It  the  proposition  that  somehow  or 
other  her  husband  had  written  "  Pickwick,"  or,  at 
least,  had  been  responsible  for  the  genius  and  suc- 
cess of  It.  It  does  not  appear  that  she  had  anything 
at  all  resembling  a  reason  for  this  opinion  except 
the  unquestionable  fact  that  the  publishers  had 
started  with  the  Idea  of  employing  Seymour.  This 
was  quite  true,  and  Dickens  (who  over  and  above 
his  honesty  was  far  too  quarrelsome  a  man  not  to 
try  to  keep  In  the  right,  anc|  who  showed  a  sort 
of  fierce  carefulness  In  telling  the  truth  In  such 
cases)  never  denied  it  or  attempted  to  conceal  it. 
It  was  quite  true,  that  at  the  beginning.  Instead 

74 


•/THE    PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

of  Seymour  being  employed  to  illustrate  Dickens, 
Dickens  may  be  said  to  have  been  employed  to 
illustrate  Seymour.  But  that  Seymour  invented 
anything  In  the  letter-press  large  or  small,  that  he 
invented  either  the  outline  of  Mr.  Pickwick's  char- 
acter or  the  number  of  Mr.  Pickwick's  cabman, 
that  he  invented  either  the  story,  or  so  much  as  a 
semi-colon  In  the  story  was  not  only  never  proved, 
but  was  never  very  lucidly  alleged.  Dickens  fills 
his  letters  with  all  that  there  Is  to  be  said  against 
Mrs.  Seymour's  Idea ;  It  Is  not  very  clear  whether 
there  was  ever  anything  definitely  said  for  It. 

Upon  the  mere  superficial  fact  and  law  of  the 
affair,  Dickens  ought  to  have  been  superior  to  this 
silly  business.  But  In  a  much  deeper  and  a  much 
more  real  sense  he  ought  to  have  been  superior  to 
it.  It  did  not  really  touch  him  or  his  greatness  at 
all,  even  as  an  abstract  allegation.  If  Seymour  had 
started  the  story,  had  provided  Dickens  with  his 
puppets,  Tupman  or  Jingle,  Dickens  would  have 
still  have  been  Dickens  and  Seymour  only  Sey- 
mour. As  a  matter  of  fact,  It  happened  to  be  a 
contemptible  lie,  but  it  would  have  been  an  equally 
contemptible  truth.  (For  the  fact  Is  that  the  great- 
ness of  Dickens  and  especially  the  greatness  of 
Pickwick  Is  not  of  a  kind  that  could  be  affected  by 
somebody  else  suggesting  the  first  Idea.  \  It  could 

75 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

not  be  affected  by  somebody  else  writing  the  first 
chapter.  If  it  could  be  shown  that  another  man 
had  suggested  to  Hawthorne  (let  us  say)  the 
primary  conception  of  the  "  Scarlet  Letter/'  Haw- 
thorne who  worked  it  out  would  still  be  an  exqui- 
site workman;  but  he  would  be  by  so  much  less 
a  creator.  But  in  a  case  like  Pickwick  there  is  a 
simple  test.  If  Seymour  gave  Dickens  the  main 
idea  of  Pickwick,  what  was  it?  There  is  no  pri- 
mary conception  of  Pickwick  for  any  one  to  sug- 
gest. Dickens  not  only  did  not  get  the  general 
plan  from  Seymour,  he  did  not  get  it  at  all.  In 
Pickwick,  and,  indeed,  in  Dickens,  generally  it  is 
In  the  details  that  the  author  is  creative,  it  is  in 
the  details  that  he  is  vast.  The  power  of  the  book 
lies  in  the  perpetual  torrent  of  ingenious  and  in- 
ventive treatment;  the  theme  (at  least  at  the  begin- 
ning) simply  does  not  exist.  The  idea  of  Tupman, 
the  fat  lady-killer,  is  in  Itself  quite  dreary  and  vul- 
gar; it  Is  the  detailed  Tupman,  as  he  is  developed, 
who  is  unexpectedly  amusing.  The  idea  of  Win- 
kle, the  clumsy  sportsman,  Is  In  itself  quite  stale; 
it  is  as  he  goes  on  repeating  himself  that  he  be- 
comes original.  We  hear  of  men  whose  imagina- 
tion can  touch  with  magic  the  dull  facts  of  our 
life,  but  Dickens's  yet  more  indomitable  fancy 
could  touch  with  magic  even  our  dull  fiction.    Be- 

76 


•*THE    PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

fore  we  are  halfway  through  the  book  the  stock 
characters  of  dead  and  damned  farces  astonish  us 
like  splendid  strangers. 

Seymour's  claim,  then,  viewed  symbolically  was 
even  a  compliment.  It  was  true  in  spirit  that 
Dickens  obtained  (or  might  have  obtained)  the 
start  of  Pickwick  from  somebody  else,  from  any- 
body else.  For  he  had  a  more  gigantic  energy 
than  the  energy  of  the  intense  artist,  the  energy 
which  is  prepared  to  write  something.  He  had 
the  energy  which  is  prepared  to  write  anything. 
He  could  have  finished  any  man's  tale.  He  could 
have  breathed  a  mad  life  into  any  man's  characters. 
If  it  had  been  true  that  Seymour  had  planned  out 
Pickwick,  if  Seymour  had  fixed  the  chapters  and 
named  and  numbered  the  characters,  his  slave 
would  have  shown  even  in  these  shackles  such  a 
freedom  as  would  have  shaken  the  world.  If 
Dickens  had  been  forced  to  make  his  incidents  out 
of  a  chapter  in  a  child's  reading-book,  or  the  names 
in  a  scrap  of  newspaper,  he  would  have  turned 
them  in  ten  pages  into  creatures  of  his  own.  Sey- 
mour, as  I  say,  was  in  a  manner  right  in  spirit. 
Dickens  would  at  this  time  get  his  materials  from 
anywhere,  in  the  sense  that  he  cared  little  what 
materials  they  were.  He  would  not  have  stolen; 
but  if  he  had  stolen  he  would  never  have  imitated. 

77 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

The  power  which  he  proceeded  at  once  to  exhibit 
was  the  one  power  In  letters  which  hterally  cannot 
be  Imitated,  the  primary  Inexhaustible  creative 
energy,  the  enormous  prodigality  of  genius  which 
no  one  but  another  genius  could  parody.  To  claim 
to  have  originated  an  idea  of  Dickens  Is  like  claim- 
ing to  have  contributed  a  glass  of  water  to  Niagara. 
Wherever  this  stream  or  that  stream  started  the  co- 
lossal cataract  of  absurdity  went  roaring  night  and 
day.  The  volume  of  his  Invention  overwhelmed  all 
doubt  of  his  inventiveness;  Dickens  was  evidently 
a  great  man;  unless  he  was  a  thousand  men. 

The  actual  circumstances  of  the  writing  and  pub- 
lishing of  "  Pickwick  "  show  that  while  Seymour's 
specific  claim  was  absurd,  Dickens's  Indignant  ex- 
actitude about  every  jot  and  tittle  of  authorship 
was  also  Inappropriate  and  misleading.  "  The 
Pickwick  Papers,"  when  all  Is  said  and  done,  did 
emerge  out  of  a  haze  of  suggestions  and  proposals 
In  which  more  than  one  person  was  Involved.  The 
publishers  failed  to  base  the  story  on  a  NImrod 
Club,  but  they  succeeded  In  basing  It  on  a  club. 
Seymour,  by  virtue  of  his  Idiosyncrasy,  If  he  did 
not  create,  brought  about  the  creation  of  Mr. 
Winkle.  Seymour  sketched  Mr.  Pickwick  as  a 
tall,  thin  man.  Mr.  Chapman  (apparently  with- 
out any  word  from  Dickens  boldly  turned  him 

78 


''THE    PICKWICK    PAPERS*' 

Into  a  short,  fat  man.  Chapman  took  the  type 
from  a  corpulent  old  dandy  named  Foster,  who 
wore  tights  and  gaiters  and  lived  at  Richmond. 
In  this  sense  were  we  affected  by  this  idle  aspect  of 
the  thing  we  might  call  Chapman  the  real  origina- 
tor of  "  Pickwick."  But  as  I  have  suggested, 
originating  "  Pickwick  "  is  not  the  point  It  was 
quite  easy  to  originate  "  Pickwick."  The  diffi- 
culty was  to  write  It. 

However  such  things  may  be,  there  can  be  no 
question  of  the  result  of  this  chaos.  In  "  The 
Pickwick  Papers  "  Dickens  sprang  suddenly  from 
a  comparatively  low  level  to  a  very  high  one.  To 
the  level  of  "  Sketches  by  Boz  "  he  never  after- 
wards descended.  To  the  level  of  "  The  Pickwick 
Papers  "  It  Is  doubtful  if  he  ever  afterwards  rose. 
"  Pickwick,"  Indeed,  is  not  a  good  novel;  but  It  is 
not  a  bad  novel,  for  it  is  not  a  novel  at  all.  In  one 
sense,  Indeed,  It  Is  something  nobler  than  a  novel, 
for  no  novel  with  a  plot  and  a  proper  termination 
could  emit  that  sense  of  everlasting  youth — a  sense  ^ 
as  of  the  gods  gone  wandering  In  England.  This  N 
Is  not  a  novel,  for  all  novels  have  an  end;  and 
"  Pickwick,"  properly  speaking,  has  no  end — he  Is  / 
equal  unto  the  angels.  The  point  at  which,  as  a 
fact,  we  find  the  printed  matter  terminates  Is  not 
an  end  In  any  artistic  sense  of  the  word.    Even  as 

79 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

a  boy  I  believed  there  were  some  more  pages  that 
were  torn  out  of  my  copy,  and  I  am  looking  for 
them  still.  The  book  might  have  been  cut  short 
^nywhere  else.  It  might  have  been  cut  short  after 
^  Mr.  Pickwick  was  released  by  Mr.  Nupkins,  or 
after  Mr.  Pickwick  was  fished  out  of  the  water,  or 
at  a  hundred  other  places.  And  we  should  still 
have  known  that  this  was  not  really  the  story's 
end.  We  should  have  known  that  Mr.  Pickwick 
was  still  having  the  same  high  adventures  on  the 
same  high  roads.  As  it  happens,  the  book  ends 
after  Mr.  Pickwick  has  taken  a  house  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Dulwich.  But  we  know  he  did  not 
stop  there.  We  know  he  broke  out,  that  he  took 
again  the  road  of  the  high  adventures;  we  know 
that  if  we  take  it  ourselves  in  any  acre  of  England, 
we  may  come  suddenly  upon  him  in  a  lane. 

But  this  relation  of  "  Pickwick  "  to  the  strict 
form  of  fiction  demands  a  further  word,  which 
should  indeed  be  said  in  any  case  before  the  con- 
sideration of  any  or  all  of  the  Dickens  tales. 
Dickens's  work  is  not  to  be  reckoned  In  novels  at 
all.  Dickens's  work  is  to  be  reckoned  always  by 
characters,  sometimes  by  groups,  oftener  by  epi- 
sodes, but  never  by  novels.  You  cannot  discuss 
whether  "  Nicholas  Nickleby  "  is  a  good  novel,  or 
whether  "  Our  Mutual  Friend  "  is  a  bad  novel. 

80 


''THE    PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

Strictly,  there  Is  no  such  novel  as  *'  Nicholas 
NIckleby."  There  is  no  such  novel  as  '^  Our 
Mutual  Friend."  JThey  are  simply  lengths  cut 
from  the  flowing  and  mixed  substance  called 
Dickens — a  substance  of  which  any  given  length 
will  be  certain  to  contain  a  given  proportion  of 
brilliant  and  of  bad  stuff.  )  You  can  say,  accord- 
ing to  your  opinions,  *'  the  Crummies  part  Is  per- 
fect,'* or  *'  the  Boffins  are  a  mistake,"  just  as  a 
man  watching  a  river  go  by  him  could  count  here 
a  floating  flower,  and  there  a  streak  of  scum.  ]But 
you  cannot  artistically  divide  the  output  Into  books. 
The  best  of  his  work  can  be  found  in  the  worst 
of  his  works.  "  The  Tale  of  Two  Cities  '*  Is  a 
good  novel;  "  Little  Dorrit "  Is  not  a  good  novel. 
But  the  description  of  "  The  Circumlocution 
Office  "  In  "  Little  Dorrit "  Is  quite  as  good  as  the 
description  of  "  Tellson's  Bank  "  In  "  The  Tale-' 
of  Two  Cities."  "  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop  "  is 
not  so  good  as  "  David  Copperfield,"  but  Swivel- 
ler  Is  quite  as  good  as  MIcawber.  Nor  Is  there  any 
reason  why  these  superb  creatures,  as  a  general 
rule,  should  be  In  one  novel  any  more  than  another. 
There  Is  no  reason  why  Sam  Weller,  In  the 
course  of  his  wanderings,  should  not  wander  Into 
"  Nicholas  NIckleby."  There  Is  no  reason  why 
Major  Bagstdck,  in  his  brisk  way,  should  not  walk 

,8 1 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

straight  out  of  "  Dombey  and  Son  "  and  straight 
into  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit."  To  this  generaliza- 
tion some  modification  should  be  added.  "  Pick- 
wick '*  stands  by  itself,  and  has  even  a  sort  of 
unity  In  not  pretending  to  unity.  /'  David  Cop- 
perfield,"  In  a  less  degree,  stands  by  itself,  as  being 
the  only  book  in  which  Dickens  wrote  of  himself ; 
and  "  The  Tale  of  Two  Cities  "  stands  by  itself 
as  being  the  only  book  In  which  Dickens  slightly 
altered  himself.  But  as  a  whole,  this  should  be 
firmly  grasped,  that  the  units  of  Dickens,  the  pri- 
mary elements,  are  not  the  stories,  but  the  charac- 
ters who  affect  the  stories — or,  more  often  still, 
the  characters  who  do  not  affect  the  stories. 

This  Is  a  plain  matter;  but,  unless  it  be  stated 
and  felt,  Dickens  may  be  greatly  misunderstood 
and  greatly  underrated.  For  not  only  is  his  whole 
machinery  directed  to  facilitating  the  self-display 
of  certain  characters,  but  something  more  deep  and 
more  unmodern  still  Is  also  true  of  him.  It  Is  also 
true  that  all  the  moving  machinery  exists  only  to 

♦  display  entirely  static  character.  Things  In  the 
Dickens  story  shift  and  change  only  In  order  to 

♦  give  us  glimpses  of  great  characters  that  do  not 

♦  change  at  all.  If  we  had  a  sequel  of  Pickwick  ten 
years  afterwards,  Pickwick  would  be  exactly  the 
same  age.     We  know  he  would  not  have  fallen 

82 


''THE     PICKWICK    PAPERS'* 

into  that  strange  and  beautiful  second  childhood 
which  soothed  and  simplified  the  end  of  Colonel 
Newcome.  Newcome,  throughout  the  book,  is  in 
an  atmosphere  of  time:  Pickwick,  throughout  the 
book,  is  not.  This  will  probably  be  taken  by  most 
modern  people  as  praise  of  Thackeray  and  dis- 
praise of  Dickens.  But  this  only  shows  how  few 
modern  people  understand  Dickens.  It  also  shows 
how  few  understand  the  faiths  and  the  fables  of 
mankind.  The  matter  can  only  be  roughly  stated 
in  one  way.  Dickens  did  not  strictly  make  a  litera-  • 
ture ;  he  made  a  mythology.  -       \ 

For  a  few  years  our  corner  of  Western  Europe 
has  had  a  fancy  for  this  thing  we  call  fiction;  that 
is,  for  writing  down  our  own  lives  or  similar  lives 
in  order  to  look  at  th^n?.  But  though  we  call  it 
fiction,  it  differs  from  older  literatures  chiefly  in 
being  less  fictitious.  It  Imitates  not  only  life,  but 
the  limitations  of  life;  It  not  only  reproduces  life, 
it  reproduces  death.  But  outside  us,  In  every  other 
country.  In  every  other  age,  there  has  been  going 
on  from  the  beginning  a  more  fictitious  kind  of 
fiction.  I  mean  the  kind  now  called  folklore,  the 
literature  of  the  people.  Our  modern  novels, 
which  deal  with  men  as  they  are,  are  chiefly  pro- 
duced by  a  small  and  educated  section  of  the  soci- 
ety.    But  this   other  literature   deals  with  men 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

greater  than  they  arc — with  deml-gods  and  heroes ; 
and  that  Is  far  too  Important  a  matter  to  be  trusted 
to  the  educated  classes.  The  fashioning  of  these 
portents  Is  a  popular  trade,  like  ploughing  or  brick- 
laying; the  men  who  made  hedges,  the  men  who 
made  ditches,  were  the  men  who  made  deities. 
Men  could  not  elect  their  kings,  but  they  could 
elect  their  gods.  So  we  find  ourselves  faced  with 
a  fundamental  contrast  between  what  Is  called  fic- 
tion and  what  Is  called  folklore.  The  one  exhibits 
an  abnormal  degree  of  dexterity  operating  within 
our  daily  limitations;  the  other  exhibits  quite  nor- 
mal desires  extended  beyond  those  limitations. 
Fiction  means  the  common  things  as  seen  by  the 
uncommon  people.  Fairy  tales  mean  the  uncom- 
mon things  as  seen  by  the  common  people. 

As  our  world  advances  through  history  towards 
Its  present  epoch,  It  becomes  more  specialist,  less 
democratic,  and  folklore  turns  gradually  Into  fic- 
tion. But  it  Is  only  slowly  that  the  old  elfin  fire 
fades  Into  the  light  of  common  realism.  For  ages 
after  our  characters  have  dressed  up  in  the  clothes 
of  mortals  they  betray  the  blood  of  the  gods. 
Even  our  phraseology  is  full  of  relics  of  this. 
When  a  modern  novel  is  devoted  to  the  bewilder- 
ments of  a  weak  young  clerk  who  cannot  decide 
which  woman  he  wants  to  marry,  or  which  new 

84 


**THE    PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

religion  he  believes  In,  we  still  give  this  knock- 
kneed  cad  the  name  of  "  the  hero  " — the  name 
which  is  the  crown  of  Achilles.  The  popular  pref- 
erence for  a  story  with  '*  a  happy  ending  "  Is  not, 
or  at  least  was  not,  a  mere  sweet-stuff  optimism; 
it  is  the  remains  of  the  old  Idea  of  the  triumph  of 
the  dragon-slayer,  the  ultimate  apotheosis  of  the 
man  beloved  of  heaven. 

But  there  Is  another  and  more  Intangible  trace 
of  this  fading  supernaturalism — a  trace  very  vivid 
to  the  reader,  but  very  elusive  to  the  critic.  It  Is 
a  certain  air  of  endlessness  In  the  episodes,  even  In 
the  shortest  episodes — a  sense  that,  although  we 
leave  them,  they  still  go  on.  Our  modern  attrac- 
tion to  short  stories  is  not  an  accident  of  form;  It 
is  the  sign  of  a  real  sense  of  fleetingness  and  fra- 
gility; It  means  that  existence  Is  only  an  Impression, 
and,  perhaps,  only  an  Illusion.  A  short  story  of 
to-day  has  the  air  of  a  dream ;  It  has  the  Irrevoca- 
ble beauty  of  a  falsehood;  we  get  a  glimpse  of  grey 
streets  of  London  or  red  plains  of  India,  as  in  an 
opium  vision;  we  see  people, — arresting  people, 
with  fiery  and  appealing  faces.  But  when  the 
story  Is  ended,  the  people  are  ended.  We  have  no 
instinct  of  anything  ultimate  and  enduring  behind 
the  episodes.  The  moderns,  in  a  word,  describe 
life  In  short  stories  because  they  are  possessed  with 

85 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

the  sentiment  that  life  itself  is  an  uncommonly 
short  story,  and  perhaps  not  a  true  one.  But  in 
this  elder  literature,  even  In  the  comic  literature 
(indeed,  especially  In  the  comic  literature),  the 
reverse  Is  true.  The  characters  are  felt  to  be  fixed 
things  of  which  we  have  fleeting  glimpses;  that  Is, 
they  are  felt  to  be  divine.  Uncle  Toby  Is  talking 
for  ever,  as  the  elves  are  dancing  for  ever.  We 
feel  that  whenever  we  hammer  on  the  house  of 
Falstaff,  Falstaff  will  be  at  home.  We  feel  It  as  a 
Pagan  would  feel  that.  If  a  cry  broke  the  silence 
after  ages  of  unbelief,  Apollo  would  still  be  listen- 
ing In  his  temple.  These  writers  may  tell  short 
stories,  but  we  feel  they  are  only  parts  of  a  long 
story.  And  herein  lies  the  peculiar  significance, 
the  peculiar  sacredness  even,  of  penny  dreadfuls  j^ 
and  the  common  printed  matter  made  for  our 
errand-boys.  Here  In  dim  and  desperate  forms, 
under  the  ban  of  our  base  culture,  stormed  at  by 
silly  magistrates,  sneered  at  by  silly  schoolmasters, 
— here  Is  the  old  popular  literature  still  popular; 
here  Is  the  unmistakable  volumlnousness,  the  thou- 
sand and  one  tales  of  Dick  Deadshot,  like  the 
thousand  and  one  tales  of  Robin  Hood.  Here 
Is  the  splendid  and  static  boy,  the  boy  who  remains 
a  boy  through  a  thousand  volumes  and  a  thousand 
years.    Here  In  mean  alleys  and  dim  shops,  shad- 

86 


''THE    PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

owed  and  shamed  by  the  police,  mankind  is  still 
driving  its  dark  trade  in  heroes.  And  elsewhere, 
and  in  all  other  ages,  in  braver  fashion,  under 
cleaner  skies  the  same  eternal  tale-telling  goes  on, 
and  the  whole  mortal  world  is  a  factory  of  im- 
mortals. 

Dickens  was  a  mythologist  rather  than  a  novel- 
ist; he  was  the  last  of  the  mythologists,  and  per- 
haps the  greatest.  He  did  not  always  manage  to 
make  his  characters  men,  but  he  always  managed, 
at  the  least,  to  make  them  gods.  They  are  crea- 
tures like  Punch  or  Father  Christmas.  They  live 
statically,  in  a  perpetual  summer  of  being  them- 
selves. It  was  not  the  aim  of  Dickens  to  show  the 
effect  of  time  and  circumstance  upon  a  character; 
it  was  not  even  his  aim  to  show  the  effect  of  a 
character  on  time  and  circumstance.  It  is  worth 
remark,  in  passing,  that  whenever  he  tried  to  de- 
scribe change  in  a  character,  he  made  a  mess  of  it, 
as  in  the  repentance  of  Dombey  or  the  apparent 
deterioration  of  Boffin.  It  was  his  aim  to  show 
character  hung  in  a  kind  of  happy  void,  in  a  world 
apart  from  time — yes,  and  essentially  apart  from 
circumstance,  though  the  phrase  may  seem  odd  in 
connection  with  the  godlike  horse-play  of  *'  Pick- 
wick." But  all  the  Pickwickian  events,  wild  as 
they  often  are,  were  only  designed  to  display  the 

87 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

greater  wlldness  of  souls,  or  sometimes  merely  to 
bring  the  reader  within  touch,  so  to  speak,  of  that 
wildness.  The  author  would  have  fired  Mr.  Pick- 
wick out  of  a  cannon  to  get  him  to  Wardle's  by 
Christmas;  he  would  have  taken  the  roof  off  to 
drop  him  Into  Bob  Sawyer's  party.  But  once  put 
Pickwick  at  Wardle's,  with  his  punch  and  a  group 
of  gorgeous  personalities,  and  nothing  will  move 
him  from  his  chair.  Once  he  Is  at  Sawyer's  party, 
he  forgets  how  he  got  there;  he  forgets  Mrs. 
Bardell  and  all  his  story.  For  the  story  was  but 
an  Incantation  to  call  up  a  god,  and  the  god  (Mr. 
Jack  Hopkins)  Is  present  In  divine  power.  Once 
the  great  characters  are  face  to  face,  the  ladder  by 
which  they  climbed  Is  forgotten  and  falls  down, 
the  structure  of  the  story  drops  to  pieces,  the  plot 
Is  abandoned,  the  other  characters  deserted  at 
every  kind  of  crisis ;  the  whole  crowded  thorough- 
fare of  the  tale  Is  blocked  by  two  or  three  talkers, 
who  take  their  Immortal  ease  as  If  they  were  al- 
ready In  Paradise.  For  they  do  not  exist  for  the 
story;  the  story  exists  for  them;  and  they  know  It. 
To  every  man  alive,  one  must  hope,  It  has  In 
some  manner  happened  that  he  has  talked  with 
his  more  fascinating  friends  round  a  table  on  some 
night  when  all  the  numerous  personalities  unfolded 
themselves  like  great  tropical  flowers.    All  fell  into 

88 


*'THE     PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

their  parts  as  In  some  delightful  impromptu  play. 
Every  man  was  more  himself  than  he  had  ever 
been  In  this  vale  of  tears.  Every  man  was  a  beau- 
tiful caricature  of  himself.  The  man  who  has 
known  such  nights  will  understand  the  exaggera- 
tions of  *'  Pickwick."  The  man  who  has  not 
known  such  nights  will  not  enjoy  "  Pickwick  " 
nor  (I  Imagine)  heaven.  For,  as  I  have  said, 
Dickens  Is,  in  this  matter,  close  to  popular  religion, 
which  Is  the  ultimate  and  reliable  religion.  He 
conceives  an  endless  joy;  he  conceives  creatures 
as  permanent  as  Puck  or  Pan — creatures  whose 
will  to  live  asons  upon  aeons  cannot  satisfy.  He 
Is  not  come,  as  a  writer,  that  his  creatures  may 
copy  life  and  copy  its  narrowness;  he  Is  come 
that  they  may  have  life,  and  that  they  may 
have  It  more  abundantly.  It  Is  absurd  Indeed 
that  Christians  should  be  called  the  enemies  of 
life  because  they  wish  life  to  last  for  ever;  It  Is 
more  absurd  still  to  call  the  old  comic  writers  dull 
because  they  wished  their  unchanging  characters 
to  last  for  ever.  Both  popular  religion,  with  Its 
endless  joys,  and  the  old  comic  story,  with  Its  end- 
less jokes,  have  In  our  time  faded  together.  We 
are  too  weak  to  desire  that  undying  vigour. 
We  believe  that  you  can  have  too  much  of  a  good 
thing — a  blasphemous  belief,  which  at  one  blow 

89 


f 

CHARLES;    DICKENS 

wrecks  all  the  heavens  that  men  have  hoped  for. 
The  grand  old  defiers  of  God%were  not  afraid  of 
an  eternity  of  torment.  We  have  come  to  be  afraid 
of  an  eternity  of  joy.  It  Is  not  my  Kuslness  here 
to  take  sides  In  this  division  between  those  who 
like  life  and  long  novels  and  those  who  like  death 
and  short  stories ;  my  only  business  is  to  point  out 
that  those  who  see  in  DIckenc's  unchanging  charac- 
ters and  recurring  catch-words  a  mere  stiffness  and 
lack  of  living  movement  miss  the  point  and  nature 
of  his  work.  His  tradition  is  another  tradition 
altogether;  his  aim  Is  another  aim  altogether  to 
those  of  the  modern  novelists  who  trace  the  al- 
chemy of  experience  and  the  autumn  tints  of  char- 
acter. He  Is  there,  like  the  common  people  of  all 
ages,  to  make  deities ;  he  is  there,  as  I  have  said,  to 
exaggerate  life  In  the  direction  of  life.  The  spirit 
^  he  at  bottom  celebrates  Is  that  of  two  friends  drink- 
ing wine  together  and  talking  through  the  night. 
But  for  him  they  are  two  deathless  friends  talking 
through  an  endless  night  and  pouring  wine  from 
an  Inexhaustible  bottle. 

This,  then,  Is  the  first  firm  fact  to  grasp  about 
"  Pickwick  "  —  about  "  Pickwick  "  more  than 
about  any  of  the  other  stories.  It  Is,  first  and  fore- 
most, a  supernatural  story.  Mr.  Pickwick  was  a 
fairy.     So  was  old  Mr.  Weller.     This  does  not 

90 


''THE    PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

Imply  that  they  were  suited  to  swing  In  a  trapeze 
of  gossamer;  It  merely  Implies  that  If  they  had 
fallen  out  of  It  on  their  heads  they  would  not  have 
died.  But,  to  speak  more  strictly,  Mr.  Samuel 
Pickwick  Is  not  the  fairy;  he  Is  the  fairy  prince; 
that  is  to  say,  he  Is  the  abstract  wanderer  and  won- 
derer,  the  Ulysses  of  Comedy — the  half-human 
and  half-elfin  creature — human  enough  to  wander, 
human  enough  to  wonder,  but  still  sustained  with 
that  merry  fatalism  that  Is  natural  to  Immortal 
beings — susFalned  by  that  hint  of  divinity  which 
tells  him  In  the  darkest  hour  that  he  Is  doomed  to 
live  happily  ever  afterwards.  He  has  set  out  walk- 
ing to  the  end  of  the  world,  but  he  knows  he  will 
find  an  inn  there. 

And  this  brings  us  to  *the  best  and  boldest 
element  of  originality  'In  **  Pickwick.**  It  has  not, 
I  think,  been  observed,  and  It  may  be  that  Dickens 
did  not  observe  It.  Certainly  he  did  not  plan  It; 
It  grew  gradually,  perhaps  out  of  the  unconscious 
part  of  his  soul,  and  warmed  the  whole  story  like 
a  slow  fire.  Of  course  It  transformed  the  whole 
story  also;  transformed  It  out  of  all  likeness  to 
itself.  About  this  latter  point  was  waged  one  of 
the  numberless  little  wars  of  Dickens.  It  was  a 
part  of  his  pugnacious  vanity  that  he  refused  to 
admit  the  truth  of  the  mildest  criticism.     More- 

9.1 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

over,  he  used  his  Inexhaustible  ingenuity  to  find  an 
apologia  that  was  generally  an  afterthought.  In- 
stead of  laughingly  admitting,  in  answer  to  criti- 
cism, the  glorious  Improbability  of  Pecksniff,  he 
retorted  with  a  sneer,  clever  and  very  unjust,  that 
he  was  not  surprised  that  the  Pecksniffs  should 
deny  the  portrait  of  Pecksniff.  When  it  was  ob- 
jected that  the  pride  of  old  Paul  Dombey  breaks 
as  abruptly  as  a  stick,  he  tried  to  make  out  that 
there  had  been  an  absorbing  psychological  strug- 
gle going  on  in  that  gentleman  all  the  time,  which 
the  reader  was  too  stupid  to  perceive.  Which  Is, 
I  am  afraid,  rubbish.  And  so,  in  a  similar  vein,  he 
answered  those  who  pointed  out  to  him  the  obvious 
and  not  very  shocking  fact  that  our  sentiments 
about  Pickwick  are  very  different  In  the  second  part 
of  the  book  from  our  sentiments  in  the  first;  that 
we  find  ourselves  at  the  beginning  setting  out  in 
the  company  of  a  farcical  old  fool.  If  not  a  farcical 
old  humbug,  and  that  we  find  ourselves  at  the  end 
saying  farewell  to  a  fine  old  English  merchant,  a 
monument  of  genial  sanity.  Dickens  answered 
with  the  same  Ingenious  self-justification  as  In  the 
other  cases — that  surely  it  often  happened  that  a 
man  met  us  first  arrayed  in  his  more  grotesque 
qualities,  and  that  fuller  acquaintance  unfolded  his 
more  serious  merits.    This,  of  course,  is  quite  true ; 

92 


I 


"THE     PICKWICK     PAPERS" 

but  I  think  any  honest  admirer  of  "  Pickwick  " 
will  feel  that  it  is  not  an  answer.  For  the  fault 
in  "  Pickwick ''  (if  it  be  a  fault)  is  a  change,  not 
in  the  hero  but  in  the  whole  atmosphere.  The 
point  is  not  that  Pickwick  turns  into  a  different 
kind  of  man;  it  is  that  "The  Pickwick  Papers" 
turns  into  a  different  kind  of  book.  And  however 
artistic  both  parts  may  be,  this  combination  must, 
in  strict  art,  be  called  inartistic.  A  man  is  quite 
artistically  justified  in  writing  a  tale  in  which  a 
man  as  cowardly  as  Bob  Acres  becomes  a  man  as 
brave  as  Hector.  But  a  man  is  not  artistically 
justified  in  writing  a  tale  which  begins  in  the  style 
of  "  The  Rivals  "  and  ends  in  the  style  of  the 
*'  Iliad."     In  other  words,  we  do  not  mind  the  , 

hero  changing  in  the  course  of  a  book ;  but  we  are  j 

'I 

not  prepared  for  the  author  changing  in  the  course] 
of  the  book.  And  the  author  did  change  in  the 
course  of  this  book.  He  made,  in  the  midst  of  this 
book  a  great  discovery,  which  was  the  discovery 
of  his  destiny,  or,  what  is  more  important,  of  his 
duty.  That  discovery  turned  him  from  the  author 
of  "  Sketches  by  Boz  "  to  the  author  of  "  David 
Copperfield."  And  that  discovery  constituted  the 
thing  of  which  I  have  spoken — the  outstanding 
and  arresting  original  feature  in  "  The  Pickwick 
Papers." 

93 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

"  Pickwick/'  I  have  said,  Is  a  romance  of  adven- 
ture, and  Samuel  Pickwick  Is  the  romantic  ad- 
venturer. So  much  Is  Indeed  obvious.  But  the 
strange  and  stirring  discovery  which  Dickens  made 
was  this — that  having  chosen  a  fat  old  man  of  the 
middle  classes  as  a  good  thing  of  which  to  make 
a  butt,  he  found  that  a  fat  old  man  of  the  middle 
classes  is  the  very  best  thing  of  which  to  make  a 
romantic  adventurer.  *'  Pickwick  "  Is  supremely 
original  In  that  It  Is  the  adventures  of  an  old  man. 
It  Is  a  fairy  tale  In  which  the  victor  Is  not  the 

,  youngest  of  the  three  brothers,  but  one  of  the 
oldest  of  their  uncles.  The  result  Is  both  noble 
and  new  and  true.     There  is  nothing  which  so 

'much  needs  simplicity  as  adventure.  And  there 
is  no  one  who  so  much  possesses  simplicity  as  an 
honest  and  elderly  man  of  business.  For  romance 
he  is  better  than  a  troop  of  young  troubadours; 
for  the  swaggering  young  fellow  anticipates  his 
adventures,  just  as  he  anticipates  his  Income. 
Hence,  both  the  adventures  and  the  Income, 
when  he  comes  up  to  them,  are  not  there.  But 
a  man  in  late  middle-age  has  grown  used  to  the 
plain  necessities,  and  his  first  holiday  Is  a  second 
youth.  A  good  man,  as  Thackeray  said  with  such 
thorough  and  searching  truth,  grows  simpler  as  he 
grows  older.     Samuel  Pickwick  in  his  youth  was 

94 


"THE     PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

probably  an  insufferable  young  coxcomb.  He 
knew  then,  or  thought  he  knew,  all  about  the 
confidence  tricks  of  swindlers  like  Jingle.  He 
knew  then,  or  thought  he  knew,  all  about  the 
amatory  designs  of  sly  ladles  like  Mrs.  Bardell. 
But  years  and  real  life  have  relieved  him  of  this 
Idle  and  evil  knowledge.  He  has  had  the  high 
good  luck  In  losing  the  follies  of  youth,  to  lose 
the  wisdom  of  youth  also.  Dickens  has  caught, 
in  a  manner  at  once  wild  and  convincing,  this 
VW\queer  innocence  of  the  afternoon  of  life.  The 
round,  moon-like  face,  the  round,  moon-like  spec- 
tacles of  Samuel  Pickwick  move  through  the  tale 
as  emblems  of  a  certain  spherlcal_slmplicity.  They 
are  fixed  In  that  grave  surprise  that  may  be  seen  | 
in  babies ;  that  grave  surprise  which  is  the  only  real ' 
happiness  that  is  possible  to  man.  Pickwick's 
round  face  is  like  a  round  and  honourable  mirror, 
in  which  are  reflected  all  the  fantasies  of  earthly 
existence ;  for  surprise  Is,  strictly  speaking,  the  only 
kind  of  reflection.  All  this  grew  gradually  on 
Dickens.  It  Is  odd  to  recall  to  our  minds  the 
original  plan,  the  plan  of  the  NImrod  Club,  and 
the  author  who  was  to  be  wholly  occupied  In  play- 
ing practical  jokes  on  his  characters.  He  had 
chosen  (or  somebody  else  had  chosen)  that  corpu- 
lent old  simpleton  as  a  person  peculiarly  fitted  to 

95 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

fall  down  trap-doors,  to  shoot  over  butter  slides, 
to  struggle  with  apple-pie  beds,  to  be  tipped  out 
of  carts  and  dipped  into  horse-ponds.  But  Dick- 
ens, and  Dickens  only,  discovered  as  he  w^ent  on 
how  fitted  the  fat  old  man  was  to  rescue  ladies, 
to  defy  tyrants,  to  dance,  to  leap,  to  experiment 
with  life,  to  be  a  dens  ex  machind,  and  even  a 
knight-errant.  Dickens  made  this  discovery. 
Dickens  went  into  the  Pickwick  Club  to  scoff,  and 
Dickens  remained  to  pray. 

Moliere  and  his  marquises  are  very  much 
amused  when  M.  Jourdain,  the  fat  old  middle- 
class  fellow,  discovers  with  delight  that  he  has  been 
talking  prose  all  his  life.  I  have  often  wondered 
whether  Moliere  saw  how  in  this  fact  M.  Jour- 
dain towers  above  them  all  and  touches  the  stars. 
He  has  the  freshness  to  enjoy  a  fresh  fact,  the 
freshness  to  enjoy  an  old  one.  He  can  feel  that 
the  common  thing  prose  is  an  accomplishment  like 
verse;  and  It  Is  an  accomplishment  like  verse;  it 
Is  the  miracle  of  language.  He  can  feel  the 
subtle  taste  of  water,  and  roll  it  on  his  tongue  like 
wine.  His  simple  vanity  and  voracity,  his  Inno- 
cent love  of  living,  his  ignorant  love  of  learning, 
are  things  far  fuller  of  romance  than  the  weari- 
ness and  foppishness  of  the  sniggering  cavaliers. 
When    he    consciously    speaks    prose,    he    uncon- 

96 


'*THE    PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

sclously  thinks  poetry.  It  would  be  better  for 
us  all  If  we  were  as  conscious  that  supper  Is  supper 
or  that  life  Is  life,  as  this  true  romantic  was  that 
prose  is  actually  prose.  M.  Jourdain  is  here  the 
type,  Mr.  Pickwick  Is  elsewhere  the  type,  of  this 
true  and  neglected  thing,  the  romance  of  the  mid- 
dle classes.  It  Is  the  custom  In  our  little  epoch  to 
sneer  at  the  middle  classes.  Cockney  artists  pro- 
fess to  find  the  bourgeoisie  dull;  as  If  artists  had 
any  business  to  find  anything  dull.  Decadents 
talk  contemptuously  of  Its  conventions  and  its  set 
tasks;  It  never  occurs  to  them  that  conventions 
and  set  tasks  are  the  very  way  to  keep  that  green- 
ness In  the  grass  and  that  redness  In  the  roses — 
which  they  had  lost  for  ever.  Stevenson,  In  his 
incomparable  "  Lantern  Bearers,"  describes  the 
ecstasy  of  a  schoolboy  In  the  mere  fact  of  button- 
ing a  dark  lantern  under  a  dark  great-coat.  If 
you  wish  for  that  ecstasy  of  the  schoolboy,  you 
must  have  the  boy;  but  you  must  also  have  the 
school.  Strict  opportunities  and  defined  hours  are 
the  very  outline  of  that  enjoyment.  A  man  like 
Mr.  Pickwick  has  been  at  school  all  his  life,  and 
when  he  comes  out  he  astonishes  the  youngsters. 
His  heart,  as  that  acute  psychologist,  Mr.  Weller, 
points  out,  had  been  born  later  than  his  body.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  Mr.  Pickwick  also,  when 

97 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

on  the  escapade  of  Winkle  and  Miss  Allen,  took 
immoderate  pleasure  in  the  performances  of  a 
dark  lantern  which  was  not  dark  enough,  and  was 
nothing  but  a  nuisance  to  everybody.  His  soul 
also  was  with  Stevenson's  boys  on  the  grey  sands 
of  Haddington,  talking  in  the  dark  by  the  sea. 
He  also  was  of  the  league  of  the  "  Lantern  Bear- 
ers." Stevenson,  I  remember,  says  that  in  the 
shops  of  that  town  they  could  purchase  *'  penny 
Pickwicks  (that  remarkable  cigar) ."  Let  us  hope 
they  smoked  them,  and  that  the  rotund  ghost  of 
Pickwick  hovered  over  the  rings  of  smoke. 

Pickwick  goes  through  life  with  that  god-like 
gullibility  which  is  the  key  to  all  adventures.  The 
greenhorn  is  the  ultimate  victor  in  everything;  it 
is  he  that  gets  the  most  out  of  life.  Because  Pick- 
wick is  led  away  by  Jingle,  he  will  be  led  to  the 
White  Hart  Inn,  and  see  the  only  Weller  clean- 
ing boots  In  the  courtyard.  Because  he  is  bam- 
boozled by  Dodson  and  Fogg,  he  will  enter  the 
prison  house  like  a  paladin,  and  rescue  the  man 
and  the  woman  who  have  wronged  him  most. 
His  soul  will  never  starve  for  exploits  or  excite- 
ments who  is  wise  enough  to  be  made  a  fool  of. 
He  will  make  himself  happy  in  the  traps  that  have 
been  laid  for  him;  he  will  roll  in  their  nets  and 
sleep.    All  doors  will  fly  open  to  him  who  has  a 

9? 


**THE    PICKWICK    PAPERS" 

mildness  more  defiant  than  mere  courage.  The 
whole  Is  unerringly  expressed  In  one  fortunate 
phrase — he  will  be  always  "  taken  In."  To  be 
taken  In  everywhere  is  to  see  the  Inside  of  every- 
thing. It  is  the  hospitality  of  circumstance.  With 
torches  and  trumpets,  like  a  guest,  the  greenhorn 
is  taken  in  by  Life.  And  the  sceptic  is  cast  out 
by  it. 


99 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  GREAT  POPULARITY 

There  Is  one  aspect  of  Charles  Dickens  which 
must  be  of  interest  even  to  that  subterranean  race 
which  does  not  admire  his  books.  Even  if  we  are 
not  Interested  in  Dickens  as  a  great  event  in  Eng- 
lish literature,  we  must  still  be  interested  in  him 
as  a  great  event  In  English  history.  If  he  had 
not  his  place  with  Fielding  and  Thackeray,  he 
would  still  have  his  place  with  Wat  Tyler  and 
Wilkes ;  for  the  man  led  a  mob.  He  did  what  no 
English  statesman,  perhaps,  has  really  done;  he 
called  out  the  people.  He  was  popular  in  a  sense 
of  which  we  moderns  have  not  even  a  notion.  In 
that  sense  there  Is  no  popularity  now.  There  are 
no  popular  authors  to-day.  We  call  such  authors 
as  Mr.  Guy  Boothby  or  Mr.  William  Le  Queux 
popular  authors.  But  this  Is  popularity  altogether 
in  a  weaker  sense;  not  only  in  quantity,  but  In 
quality.  The  old  popularity  was  positive ;  the  new 
is  negative.  There  Is  a  great  deal  of  difference 
between  the  eager  man  who  wants  to  read  a  book, 
and  the  tired  man  who  wants  a  book  to  read.    A 

ICO 


THE    GREAT     POPiUI^ARITY;^}  ;•;.  i'.i  i />' 

man  reading  a  Le  Queux  mystery  wants  to  get  to 
the  end  of  it.  A  man  reading  the  Dickens  novel  W| 
wished  that  it  might  never  end.  Men  read  a 
Dickens  story  six  times  because  they  knew  it  so 
well.  If  a  man  can  read  a  Le  Queux  story  six 
times  it  Is  only  because  he  can  forget  it  six  times. 
In  short,  the  Dickens  novel  was  popular,  not  be- 
cause it  was  an  unreal  world,  but  because  it  was 
a  real  world;  a  world  in  which  the  soul  could  live. 
The  modern  "  shocker  "  at  its  very  best  is  an  inter- 
lude In  life.  But  in  the  days  when  Dickens's  work 
was  coming  out  in  serial,  people  talked  as  if  real 
life  were  itself  the  Interlude  between  one  issue  of 
''  Pickwick  "  and  another. 

In  reaching  the  period  of  the  publication  of 
"  Pickwick,"  we  reach  this  sudden  apotheosis  of 
Dickens.  Henceforward  he  filled  the  literary 
world  in"  a  way  hard  to  imagine.  Fragments  of 
that  huge  fashion  remain  in  our  daily  language ;  in 
the  talk  of  every  trade  or  public  question  are 
embedded  the  wrecks  of  that  enormous  religion. 
Men  give  out  the  airs  of  Dickens  without  even 
opening  his  books;  just  as  Catholics  can  live  in  a 
tradition  of  Christianity  without  having  looked  at 
the  New  Testament.  The  man  in  the  street  has 
more  memories  of  Dickens,  whom  he  has  not  read, 
than  of  Marie  Corelli,  whom  he  has.     There  is 

lOI 


;  ;    (;;|lARLES     DICKENS 

nothing  in  any  way  parallel  to  this  omnipresence 
and  vitality  in  the  great  comic  characters  of  Boz. 
There  are  no  modern  Bumbles  and  Pecksniffs,  no 
modern  Gamps  and  Micawbers.  Mr.  Rudyard 
Kipling  (to  take  an  author  of  a  higher  type  than 
those  before  mentioned)  is  called,  and  called  justly, 
a  popular  author;  that  is  to  say,  he  is  widely  read, 
greatly  enjoyed,  and  highly  remunerated;  he  has 
achieved  the  paradox  of  at  once  making  poetry  and 
making  money.  But  let  any  one  who  wishes  to 
see  the  difference  try  the  experiment  of  assuming 
the  Kipling  characters  to  be  common  property  like 
the  Dickens  characters.  Let  any  one  go  into  an 
average  parlour  and  allude  to  Strickland  as  he 
would  allude  to  Mr.  Bumble,  the  Beadle.  Let 
any  one  say  that  somebody  is  "  a  perfect  Learoyd," 
as  he  would  say  "  a  perfect  Pecksniff."  Let  any 
one  write  a  comic  paragraph  for  a  halfpenny  paper, 
and  allude  to  Mrs.  Hawksbee  instead  of  to  Mrs. 
Gamp.  He  will  soon  discover  that  the  modern 
world  has  forgotten  its  own  fiercest  booms  more 
completely  than  it  has  forgotten  this  formless  tra- 
dition from  its  fathers.  The  mere  dregs  of  it 
come  to  more  than  any  contemporary  excitement; 
the  gleaning  of  the  grapes  of  "  Pickwick  "  is  more 
than  the  whole  vintage  of  "  Soldiers  Three." 
There  Is  one  instance,  and  I  think  only  one,  of  an 

IQ2 


THE    GREAT    POPULARITY,     ::     .; 

exception  to  this  generalization ;  there  is  one  figure 
in  our  popular  literature  which  would  really  be 
recognized  by  the  populace.    Ordinary  men  would 
understand  you  if  you  referred  currently  to  Sher- 
lock Holmes.    Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  would  no 
doubt  be  justified  in  rearing  his  head  to  the  stars, 
remembering  that  Sherlock   Holmes   is  the  only 
really  familiar  figure  In  modern  fiction.     But  let 
him  droop  that  head  again  with  a  gentle  sadness, 
remembering  that  if  Sherlock  Holmes  is  the  only 
familiar  figure  In  modern  fiction,  Sherlock  Holmes 
is  also  the  only  familiar  figure  In  the  Sherlock 
Holmes  tales.    Not  many  people  could  say  offhand 
what  was  the  name  of  the  owner  of  Silver  Blaze, 
or  whether  Mrs.  Watson  was  dark  or  fair.     But  \ 
if    Dickens    had    written    the    Sherlock    Holmes; 
stories,  every  character  In  them  would  have  been'^ 
equally    arresting   and   memorable.      A    Sherlock 
Holmes  would  have  cooked  the  dinner  for  Sher- 
lock  Holmes;    a    Sherlock    Holmes   would   have 
driven  his  cab.     If  Dickens  brought  In  a  man 
merely  to  carry  a  letter,  he  had  time  for  a  touch 
or  two,  and  made  him  a  giant.     Dickens  not  only 
conquered  the  world,  he  conquered  It  with  minor 
characters.     Mr.  John   Smauker,  the  servant  of 
Mr.    Cyrus    Bantam,    though    he    merely   passes 
across  the  stage,  Is  almost  as  vivid  to  us  as  Mr, 

103 


•;*;•:•;.;•  •;:*  charles  dickens 

Samuel  Weller,  the  servant  of  Mr.  Samuel  Pick- 
wick. The  young  man  with  the  lumpy  forehead, 
who  only  says  "  Esker  *'  to  Mr.  Podsnap's  foreign 
gentleman,  Is  as  good  as  Mr.  Podsnap  himself. 
They  appear  only  for  a  fragment  of  time,  but 
they  belong  to  eternity.  We  have  them  only  for 
an  instant,  but  they  have  us  for  ever. 

In  dealing  with  Dickens,  then,  we  are  dealing 
with  a  man  whose  public  success  was  a  marvel  and 
almost  a  monstrosity.  And  here  I  perceive  that 
my  friend,  the  purely  artistic  critic,  primed  with 
Flaubert  and  Turgenev,  can  contain  himself  no 
longer.  He  leaps  to  his  feet,  upsetting  his  cup  of 
cocoa,  and  asks  contemptuously  what  all  this  has  to 
do  with  criticism.  "  Why  begin  your  study  of  an 
author,"  he  says,  "with  trash  about  popularity? 
Boothby  Is  popular,  and  Le  Queux  Is  popular,  and 
Mother  Slegel  Is  popular.  If  Dickens  was  even 
more  popular,-  It  may  only  mean  that  Dickens  was 
even  worse.  The  people  like  bad  literature.  If 
your  object  Is  to  show  that  Dickens  was  good 
literature,  you  should  rather  apologize  for  his 
popularity,  and  try  to  explain  It  away.  You  should 
seek  to  show  that  Dickens's  work  was  good  litera- 
ture, although  It  was  popular.  Yes,  that  Is  your 
task,  to  prove  that  Dickens  was  admirable,  al- 
though he  was  admired !  " 

104 


THE    GREAT    POPULARITY 

I  ask  the  artistic  critic  to  be  patient  for  a  little 
and  to  believe  that  I  have  a  serious  reason  for 
registering  this  historic  popularity.  To  that  we 
shall  come  presently.  But  as  a  manner  of  approach 
I  may  perhaps  ask  leave  to  examine  this  actual  and 
fashionable  statement,  to  which  I  have  supposed 
him  to  have  recourse — the  statement  that  the  peo- 
ple like  bad  literature,  and  even  like  literature 
because  it  is  b'kd.  This  way  of  stating  the  thing 
is  an  error,  and  In  that  error  lies  matter  of  much 
Import  to  Dickens  and  his  destiny  In  letters.  The 
public  does  not  like  bad  literature.  The  public 
likes  a  certain  kind  of  literature  and  likes  that  kind 
of  literature  even  when  it  is  bad  better  than  an- 
other kind  of  literature  even  when  It  Is  good.  Nor 
Is  this  unreasonable ;  for  the  line  between  different 
types  of  literature  Is  as  real  as  the  line  between 
tears  and  laughter;  and  to  tell  people  who  can  only 
get  bad  comedy  that  you  have  some  first-class 
tragedy  Is  as  irrational  as  to  offer  a  man  who  is 
shivering  over  weak  warm  coffee  a  really  superior 
sort  of  ice. 

Ordinary  people  dislike  the  delicate  modern 
work,  not  because  it  is  good  or  because  it  is  bad, 
but  because  It  is  not  the  thing  that  they  asked  for. 
If,  for  instance,  you  find  them  pent  in  sterile  streets 
and  hungering   for  adventure  and  a  violent  se- 

105 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

crecy,  and  if  you  then  give  them  their  choice  be- 
tween "  A  Study  In  Scarlet,"  a  good  detective 
story,  and  "  The  Autobiography  of  Mark  Ruth- 
erford," a  good  psychological  monologue,  no 
doubt  they  will  prefer  "  A  Study  In  Scarlet."  But 
they  will  not  do  so  because  *'  The  Autobiography 
of  Mark  Rutherford  "  Is  a  very  good  monologue, 
but  because  It  Is  evidently  a  very  poor  detective 
story.  They  will  be  Indifferent  to  "  Les  Aveugles," 
not  because  It  Is  good  drama,  but  because  It  is  bad 
melodrama.  They  do  not  like  good  Introspective 
sonnets;  but  neither  do  they  like  bad  Introspective 
sonnets,  of  which  there  are  many.  When  they 
walk  behind  the  brass  of  the  Salvation  Army  band 
instead  of  listening  to  harmonies  at  Queen's  Hall, 
It  Is  always  assumed  that  they  prefer  bad  music. 
But  it  may  be  merely  that  they  prefer  military 
music,  music  marching  down  the  open  street,  and 
that  if  Dan  Godfrey^s  band  could  be  smitten  with 
salvation  and  lead  them,  they  would  like  that  even 
better.  And  while  they  might  easily  get  more 
satisfaction  out  of  a  screaming  article  in  The  War 
Cry  than  out  of  a  page  of  Emerson  about  the  Over- 
soul,  this  would  not  be  because  the  page  of  Emer- 
son is  another  and  superior  kind  of  literature.  It 
would  be  because  the  page  of  Emerson  is  another 
(and  Inferior)  kind  of  religion. 

ic6 


THE    GREAT    POPULARITY 

Dickens  stands  first  as  a  defiant  monument  of 
J  what  happens  when  a  great  literary  genius  has  a 
literary  taste  akin  to  that  of  the  community.  For 
this  kinship  was  deep  and  spiritual.  Dickens  was 
not  like  our  ordinary  demagogues  and  journalists. 
Dickens  did  not  write  what  the  people  wanted. 
Dickens  wanted  what  the  people  wanted.  And 
with  this  was  connected  that  other  fact  which 
must  never  be  forgotten,  and  which  I  have  more 
than  once  insisted  on,  that  Dickens  and  his  school 
had  a  hilarious  faith  In  democracy  and  thought 
of  the  service  of  It  as  a  sacred  priesthood.  Hence 
there  was  this  vital  point  in  his  popularism,  that 
there  was  no  condescension  in  it.  The  belief  that 
the  rabble  will  only  read  rubbish  can  be  read  be- 
tween the  lines  of  all  our  contemporary  writers, 
even  of  those  writers  whose  rubbish  the  rabble 
reads.  Mr.  Fergus  Hume  has  no  more  respect 
for  the  populace  than  Mr.  George  Moore.  The 
only  difference  lies  between  those  writers  who  will 
consent  to  talk  down  to  the  people,  and  those 
writers  who  will  not  consent  to  talk  down  to  the 
people.  But  Dickens  never  talked  down  to  the 
people.  He  talked  up  to  the  people.  He  ap- 
proached the  people  like  a  deity  and  poured  out 
his  riches  and  his  blood.  This  Is  what  makes  the 
immortal  bond  between  him  and  the  masses  of 

107 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

men.  He  had  not  merely  produced  something 
they  could  understand,  but  he  took  it  seriously, 
and  toiled  and  agonized  to  produce  it.  They  were 
not  only  enjoying  one  of  the  best  writers,  they 
were  enjoying  the  best  he  could  do.  His  raging 
and  sleepless  nights,  his  wild  walks  in  the  dark- 
ness, his  note-books  crowded,  his  nerves  in  rags, 
all  this  extraordinary  output  was  but  a  fit  sacrifice 
to  the  ordinary  man.  He  climbed  towards  the 
lower  classes.  He  panted  upwards  on  weary  wings 
to  reach  the  heaven  of  the  poor. 

His  power,  then,  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  ex- 
pressed with  an  energy  and  brilliancy  quite  uncom- 
mon the  things  close  to  the  common  mind.     But 
with   this  mere   phrase,    the   common   mind,   we 
collide  with  a  current  error.    Commonness  and  the 
common  mind  are  now  generally  spoken  of  as 
meaning  in  some  manner  inferiority  and  the  in- 
ferior mind;  the  mind  of  the  mere  mob.     But  the 
common  mind  means  the  mind  of  all  the  artists 
and   heroes;   or   else   it  would   not  be   common. 
Plato    had   the    common    mind;    Dante    had    the 
common  mind;  or  that  mind  was  not  common. 
.  Commonness  means  the   quality  common  to  the 
'  saint  and  the  sinner,  to  the  philosopher  and  the 
'fool;  and  it  was  this  that  Dickens  grasped  and 
'developed.     In  everybody  there  is  a  certain  thing 

io8 


THE    GREAT    POPULARITY 

that  loves  babies,  that  fears  death,  that  likes  sun- 
light: that  thing  enjoys  Dickens.  And  everybody 
does  not  mean  uneducated  crowds;  everybody 
means  everybody :  everybody  means  Mrs.  Meynell. 
This  lady,  a  cloistered  and  fastidious  writer,  has 
written  one  of  the  best  eulogies  of  Dickens  that 
exist,  an  essay  In  praise  of  his  pungent  perfection 
of  epithet.  And  when  I  say  that  everybody  under- 
stands Dickens  I  do  not  mean  that  he  Is  suited  to 
the  untaught  intelligence.  I  mean  that  he  is  so 
plain  that  even  scholars  can  understand  him. 

The  best  expression  of  the  fact,  however,  is  to 
be  found  in  noting  the  two  things  In  which  he  Is 
most  triumphant.  In  order  of  artistic  value,  next 
after  his  humour,  comes  his  horror.  And  both 
his  humour  and  his  horror  are  of  a  kind  strictly 
to  be  called  human;  that  is,  they  belong  to  the 
basic  part  of  us,  below  the  lowest  roots  of  our 
variety.  His  horror  for  Instance  Is  a  healthy 
churchyard  horror,  a  fear  of  the  grotesque  defa- 
mation called  death;  and  this  every  man  has,  even 
if  he  also  has  the  more  delicate  and  depraved  fears 
that  come  of  an  evil  spiritual  outlook.  We  may 
be  afraid  of  a  fine  shade  with  Henry  James;  that 
Is,  we  may  be  afraid  of  the  world.  We  may  be 
afraid  of  a  taut  silence  with  Maeterlinck;  that  is, 
we  may  be  afraid  of  our  own  souls.     But  every 

109 


ii 


CPIARLES     DICKENS 

one  will  certainly  be  afraid  of  a  Cock  Lane  Ghost, 
including  Henry  James  and  Maeterlinck.  This 
latter  is  literally  a  mortal  fear,  a  fear  of  death; 
it  Is  not  the  immortal  fear,  or  fear  of  damnation, 
which  belongs  to  all  the  more  refined  Intellects  of 
our  day.  In  a  word,  Dickens  does,  in  the  exact 
sense,  make  the  flesh  creep;  he  does  not,  like  the 
decadents,  make  the  soul  crawl.  And  the  creep- 
ing of  the  flesh  on  being  reminded  of  its  fleshly 
failure  is  a  strictly  univ^ersal  thing  which  we  can 
all  feel,  while  some  of  us  are  as  yet  uninstructed 
in  the  art  of  spiritual  crawling.  In  the  same  way 
the  Dickens  mirth  is  a  part  of  man  and  universal. 
All  men  can  laugh  at  broad  humour,  even  the 
subtle  humourists.  Even  the  modern  flaneur ^  who 
can  smile  at  a  partlcufar  combination  of  green  and 
yellow,  would  laugh  at  Mr.  Lammle's  request  for 
Mr.  Fledgeby's  nose.  In  a  word — the  common 
things  are  common — even  to  the  uncommon 
people. 

These  two  primary  dispositions  of  Dickens,  to 
\  make  the  flesh  creep  and  to  make  the  sides  ache, 
'  were  a  sort  of  twins  of  his  spirit;  they  were  never 
far  apart  and  the  fact  of  their  aflinity  Is  Interest- 
ingly exhibited  In  the  first  two  novels. — - 

Generally  he  mixed  the  two  up  In  a  book  and 
mixed  a  great  many  other  things  with  them.     As 

no 


THE    GREAT    POPULARITY 

a  rule  he  cared  little  If  he  kept  six  stories  of  quite 
different  colours  running  In  the  same  book.  The 
effect  was  sometimes  similar  to  that  of  playing  six 
tunes  at  once.  He  does  not  mind  the  coarse  tragic 
figure  of  Jonas  Chuzzlewit  crossing  the  mental 
stage  which  Is  full  of  the  allegorical  pantomime  of 
Eden,  Mr.  Chollop  and  The  Watertoast  Gazette,  a 
scene  which  Is  as  much  of  a  satire  as  "  Gulliver," 
and  nearly  as  much  of  a  fairy  tale.  He  does  not 
mind  binding  up  a  rather  pompous  sketch  of  pros- 
titution In  the  same  book  with  an  adorable  Impos- 
sibility like  Bunsby.  But  "  Pickwick  "  Is  so  far 
a  coherent  thing  that  It  Is  coherently  comic  and 
consistently  rambling.  And  as  a  consequence  his 
next  book  was,  upon  the  whole,  coherently  and 
consistently  horrible.  As  his  natural  turn  for  ter- 
rors was  kept  down  In  "  Pickwick,"  so  his  natural 
turn  for  joy  and  laughter  Is  kept  down  In  *'  Oliver 
Twist."  In  ^'  Oliver  Twist  "  the  smoke  of  the 
thieves'  kitchen  hangs  over  the  whole  tale,  and  the 
shadow  of  Fagin  falls  everywhere.  The  little 
lamp-lit  rooms  of  Mr.  Brownlow  and  Rose  Maylle 
are  to  all  appearance  purposely  kept  subordinate, 
a  mere  foil  to  the  foul  darkness  without.  It  was 
a  strange  and  appropriate  accident  that  Crulk- 
shank  and  not  '*  Phiz  "  should  have  Illustrated 
this  book.     There  was  about  Crulkshank's  art  a 

III 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

kind  of  cramped  energy  which  Is  almost  the  defi- 
nition of  the  criminal  mind.  His  drawings  have 
a  dark  strength:  yet  he  does  not  only  draw  mor- 
bidly, he  draws  meanly.  In  the  doubled-up  figure 
and  frightful  eyes  of  Fagin  in  the  condemned  cell 
there  is  not  only  a  baseness  of  subject;  there  Is  a 
kind  of  baseness  In  the  very  technique  of  It.  It  is 
not  drawn  with  the  free  lines  of  a  free  man ;  It  has 
the  half-witted  secrecies  of  a  hunted  thief.  It  does 
not  look  merely  like  a  picture  of  Fagin;  It  looks 
like  a  picture  by  Fagin.  Among  these  dark  and 
detestable  plates  there  Is  one  which  has  with  a 
kind  of  black  directness,  the  dreadful  poetry  that 
does  Inhere  In  the  story,  stumbling  as  It  often  Is. 
It  represents  Oliver  asleep  at  an  open  window  in 
the  house  of  one  of  his  humaner  patrons.  And 
outside  the  window,  but  as  big  and  close  as  if 
they  were  In  the  room  stand  Fagin  and  the  foul- 
faced  Monk,  staring  at  him  with  dark  monstrous 
visages  and  great,  white  wicked  eyes.  In  the  style 
of  the  simple  deviltry  of  the  draughtsman.  The 
very  naivete  of  the  horror  Is  horrifying:  the  very 
woodenness  of  the  two  wicked  men  seems  to  make 
them  worse  than  mere  men  who  are  wicked.  But 
this  picture  of  big  devils  at  the  window-sill  does 
express,  as  has  been  suggested  above,  the  thread 
of  poetry  In  the  whole  thing ;  the  sense,  that  is,  of 

112 


THE     GREAT    POPULARITY 

the  thieves  as  a  kind  of  army  of  devils  compassing 
earth  and  sky,  crying  for  Oliver's  soul  and  besieg- 
ing the  house  In  which  he  Is  barred  for  safety.  In 
this  matter  there  Is,  I  think,  a  difference  between 
the  author  and  the  Illustrator.  In  Crulkshank 
there  was  surely  something  morbid;  but,  sensitive 
and  sentimental  as  Dickens  was,  there  was  nothing 
morbid  In  him.  He  had,  as  Stevenson  had,  more 
of  the  mere  boy's  love  of  suffocating  stories  of 
blood  and  darkness;  of  skulls,  of  gibbets,  of  all  the 
things,  in  a  word,  that  are  sombre  without  being 
sad.  There  Is  a  ghastly  joy  In  remembering  our 
boyish  reading  about  Sikes  and  his  flight;  espe- 
cially about  the  voice  of  that  unbearable  pedlar 
which  went  on  in  a  monotonous  and  maddening 
sing-song,  '*  will  wash  out  grease-stains,  mud- 
stains,  blood-stains,"  until  Sikes  fled  almost  scream- 
ing. For  this  boyish  mixture  of  appetite  and 
repugnance  there  is  a  good  popular  phrase,  "  sup- 
ping on  horrors."  Dickens  supped  on  horrors  as 
he  supped  on  Christmas  pudding.  He  supped  on 
horrors  because  he  was  an  optimist  and  could  sup 
on  anything.  There  was  no  saner  or  simpler 
schoolboy  than  Traddles,  who  covered  all  his 
books  with  skeletons. 

"  Oliver  Twist  "  had  begun  in  Bentley's  Mis- 
cellany, which  Dickens  edited  in   1837.     It  was 

113 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

interrupted  by  a  blow  that  for  the  moment  broke 
the  author's  spirit  and  seemed  to  have  broken  his 
heart.  His  wife's  sister,  Mary  Hogarth,  died  sud- 
denly. To  Dickens  his  wife's  family  seems  to 
have  been  like  his  own;  his  affections  were  heavily 
committed  to  the  sisters,  and  of  this  one  he  was 
peculiarly  fond.  All  his  life,  through  much  conceit 
and  sometimes  something  bordering  on  selfishness, 
we  can  feel  the  redeeming  note  of  an  almost  tragic 
tenderness;  he  was  a  man  who  could  really  have 
died  of  love  or  sorrow.  He  took  up  the  work  of 
''  Oliver  Twist  "  again  later  in  the  year,  and  fin- 
ished it  at  the  end  of  1838.  His  work  was  inces- 
sant and  almost  bewildering.  In  1838  he  had 
already  brought  out  the  first  number  of  '^  Nicholas 
Nickleby."  But  the  great  popularity  went  boom- 
ing on ;  the  whole  world  was  roaring  for  books  by 
Dickens,  and  more  books  by  Dickens,  and  Dickens 
was  labouring  night  and  day  like  a  factory. 
Among  other  things  he  edited  the  "  Memoirs  of 
Grimaldl."  The  incident  is  only  worth  mention- 
ing for  the  sake  of  one  more  example  of  the  silly 
ease  with  which  Dickens  was  drawn  by  criticism 
and  the  clever  ease  with  which  he  managed.  In 
these  small  squabbles,  to  defend  himself.  Some- 
body mildly  suggested  that,  after  all,  Dickens  had 
never  known  Grimaldl.     Dickens  was  down  on 

1 14. 


THE    GREAT    POPULARITY 

him  like  a  thunderbolt,  sardonically  asking  how 
close  an  Intimacy  Lord  Braybrooke  had  with  Mr. 
Samuel  Pepys. 

''  Nicholas  Nickleby  "  is  the  most  typical  per- 
haps of  the  tone  of  his  earlier  works.  It  is  in 
form  a  very  rambling,  old-fashioned  romance,  the 
kind  of  romance  In  which  the  hero  is  only  a  con- 
venience for  the  frustration  of  the  villain.  Nicho- 
las is  what  is  called  in  theatricals  a  stick.  But  any 
stick  is  good  enough  to  beat  a  Squeers  with.  That 
strong  thwack,  that  simplified  energy  is  the  whole 
object  of  such  a  story;  and  the  whole  of  this  tale 
is  full  of  a  kind  of  highly  picturesque  platitude. 
The  wicked  aristocrats,  Sir  Mulberry  Hawk,  Lord 
Frederick  Verisopht  and  the  rest  are  inadequate 
versions  of  the  fashionable  profligate.  But  this 
is  not  (as  some  suppose)  because  Dickens  in  his 
vulgarity  could  not  comprehend  the  refinement  of 
patrician  vice.  There  is  no  idea  more  vulgar  or 
more  ignorant  than  the  notion  that  a  gentleman 
is  generally  what  is  called  refined.  The  error  of 
the  Hawk  conception  is  that,  if  anything,  he  is 
too  refined.  Real  aristocratic  blackguards  do  not 
swagger  and  rant  so  well.  A  real  fast  baronet 
would  not  have  defied  Nicholas  in  the  tavern  with 
so  much  oratorical  dignity.  A  real  fast  baronet 
would  probably  have  been  choked  with  apoplectic 

115 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

embarrassment  and  said  nothing  at  all.  But  Dick- 
ens read  into  this  aristocracy  a  grandiloquence  and 
a  natural  poetry  which,  like  all  melodrama,  is 
really  the  precious  jewel  of  the  poor. 

But  the  book  contains  something  which  is  much 
more  Dickensian.  It  is  exquisitely  characteristic 
of  Dickens  that  the  truly  great  achievement  of  the 
story  is  the  person  who  delays  the  story.  Mrs. 
Nickleby  with  her  beautiful  mazes  of  memory  does 
her  best  to  prevent  the  story  of  Nicholas  Nickleby 
from  being  told.  And  she  does  well.  There  is 
no  particular  necessity  that  we  should  know  what 
happens  to  Madeline  Bray.  There  is  a  desperate 
and  crying  necessity  that  we  should  know  that 
Mrs.  Nickleby  once  had  a  foot-boy  who  had  a 
wart  on  his  nose  and  a  driver  who  had  a  green 
shade  over  his  left  eye.  If  Mrs.  Nickleby  is  a 
fool,  she  is  one  of  those  fools  who  are  wiser  than 
the  world.  iShe  stands  for  a  great  truth  which  we 
must  not  forget;  the  truth  that  experience  is  not 
In  real  life  a  saddening  thing  at  all.  The  people 
who  have  had  misfortunes  are  generally  the  people 
who  love  to  talk  about  them.  Experience  is  really 
one  of  the  gaieties  of  old  age,  one  of  its  dissipa- 
tions. Mere  memory  becomes  a  kind  of  debauch. 
Experience  may  be  disheartening  to  those  who  are 
foolish  enough  to  try  to  co-ordinate  It  and  to  draw 

ii6 


THE    GREAT    POPULARITY 

deductions  from  It.  But  to  those  happy  souls, 
like  Mrs.  NIckleby,  to  whom  relevancy  Is  nothing, 
the  whole  of  their  past  life  Is  like  an  Inexhaustible 
fairyland.  Just  as  we  take  a  rambling  walk  be- 
cause w^e  know  that  a  w^hole  district  Is  beautiful, 
so  they  Indulge  a  rambling  mind  because  they  know 
that  a  whole  existence  Is  Interesting.  A  boy  does 
not  plunge  Into  his  future  more  romantically  and 
at  random,  than  they  plunge  Into  their  past. 

Another  gleam  In  the  book  Is  Mr.  Mantallnl. 
Of  him,  as  of  all  the  really  great  comic  characters 
of  Dickens,  It  Is  Impossible  to  speak  with  any 
critical  adequacy.  Perfect  absurdity  is  a  direct 
thing,  like  physical  pain,  or  a  strong  smell.  A 
joke  is  a  fact.  However  Indefensible  it  is  it 
cannot  be  attacked.  However  defensible  it  is  it 
cannot  be  defended.  That  Mr.  Mantalini  should 
say  in  praising  the  "  outline  ''  of  his  wife,  "  The 
two  Countesses  had  no  outlines,  and  the  Dow- 
ager's was  a  demd  outline, '*  this  can  only  be  called 
an  unanswerable  absurdity.  You  may  try  to  an- 
alyse it,  as  Charles  Lamb  did  the  indefensible  joke 
about  the  hare;  you  may  dwell  for  a  moment  on 
the  dark  distinctions  between  the  negative  disquali- 
fication of  the  Countesses  and  the  positive  dis- 
qualification of  the  Dowager,  but  you  will  not 
capture  the  violent  beauty  of  it  in  any  way.    *'  She 

117 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

will  be  a  lovely  widow;  I  shall  be  a  body.  Some 
handsome  women  will  cry;  she  will  laugh 
demnedly."  This  vision  of  demoniac  heartless- 
ness  has  the  same  defiant  finality.  I  mention  the 
matter  here,  but  it  has  to  be  remembered  in  con- 
nection with  all  the  comic  masterpieces  of  Dick- 
ens. Dickens  has  greatly  suffered  with  the  critics 
precisely  through  this  stunning  simplicity  in  his 
best  work.  The  critic  is  called  upon  to  describe 
his  sensations  while  enjoying  Mantalinl  and 
Micawber,  and  he  can  no  more  describe  them  than 
he  can  describe  a  blow  in  the  face.  Thus  Dickens, 
in  this  self-conscious,  analytical  and  descriptive 
age,  loses  both  ways.  He  is  doubly  unfitted  for 
the  best  modern  criticism.  His  bad  work  is  below 
that  criticism.    His  good  work  is  above  it. 

But  gigantic  as  were  Dickens's  labours,  gigantic 
as  were  the  exactions  from  him,  his  own  plans 
were  more  gigantic  still.  He  had  the  type  of  mind 
that  wishes  to  do  every  kind  of  work  at  once;  to 
do  everybody's  work  as  well  as  Its  own.  There 
floated  before  him  a  vision  of  a  monstrous  maga- 
zine, entirely  written  by  himself.  It  is  true  that 
when  this  scheme  came  to  be  discussed,  he  sug- 
gested that  other  pens  might  be  occasionally  em- 
ployed; but,  reading  between  the  lines.  It  Is  suffi- 
ciently evident  that  he  thought  of  the  thing  as  a 

ii8 


THE     GREAT     POPULARITY 

kind  of  vast  multiplication  of  himself,  with  Dick- 
ens as  editor,  opening  letters,  Dickens  as  leader- 
writer  writing  leaders,  Dickens  as  reporter  report- 
ing meetings,  Dickens  as  reviewer  reviewing  books, 
Dickens,  for  all  I  know,  as  office-boy,  opening  and 
shutting  doors.  This  serial,  of  which  he  spoke  to 
Messrs.  Chapman  and  Hall,  began  and  broke  off 
and  remains  as  a  colossal  fragment  bound  together 
under  the  title  of  "  Master  Humphrey's  Clock." 
One  characteristic  thing  he  wished  to  have  in  the 
periodical.  He  suggested  an  Arabian  Nights  of 
London,  in  which  Gog  and  Magog,  the  giants  of 
the  city,  should  give  forth  chronicles  as  enormous 
as  themselves.  He  had  a  taste  for  these  schemes 
or  frameworks  for  many  tales.  He  made  and 
abandoned  many;  many  he  half-fulfilled.  I 
strongly  suspect  that  he  meant  Major  Jackman,  in 
"  Mrs.  Lirriper's  Lodgings  "  and  "  Mrs.  Lirri- 
per's  Legacy,"  to  start  a  series  of  studies  of  that 
lady's  lodgers,  a  kind  of  history  of  No.  8i  Nor- 
folk Street,  Strand.  "  The  Seven  Poor  Travel- 
lers "  was  planned  for  seven  stories ;  we  will  not 
say  seven  poor  stories.  Dickens  had  meant,  prob- 
ably, to  write  a  tale  for  each  article  of  "  Some- 
body's Luggage  "  :  he  only  got  as  far  as  the  hat 
and  the  boots.  This  gigantesque  scale  of  literary 
architecture,  huge  and  yet  curiously  cosy,  is  char- 

119 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

acterlstic  of  his  spirit,  fond  of  size  and  yet  fond 
of  comfort.  He  liked  to  have  story  within  story, 
like  room  within  room  of  some  labyrinthine  but 
comfortable  castle.  In  this  spirit  he  wished 
"  Master  Humphrey's  Clock  "  to  begin,  and  to 
be  a  big  frame  or  bookcase  for  numberless  novels. 
The  clock  started ;  but  the  clock  stopped. 

In  the  prologue  by  Master  Humphrey  reappears 
Mr.  Pickwick  and  Sam  Weller,  and  of  that  resur- 
rection many  things  have  been  said,  chiefly  expres- 
sions of  a  reasonable  regret.  Doubtless  they  do 
not  add  much  to  their  author's  reputation,  but  they 
add  a  great  deal  to  their  author's  pleasure.  It  was 
Ingrained  in  him  to  wish  to  meet  old  friends.  All 
his  characters  are,  so  to  speak,  designed  to  be  old 
friends;  in  a  sense  every  Dickens  character  Is  an 
old  friend,  even  when  he  first  appears.  He  comes 
to  us  mellow  out  of  many  Implied  interviews,  and 
carries  the  firelight  on  his  face.  Dickens  was  sim- 
ply pleased  to  meet  Pickwick  again,  and  being 
pleased,  he  made  the  old  man  too  comfortable  to 
be  amusing. 

But  "  Master  Humphrey's  Clock "  Is  now 
scarcely  known  except  as  the  shell  of  one  of  the 
well-known  novels.  "  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop  " 
was  published  in  accordance  with  the  original 
*'  Clock  "  scheme.    Perhaps  the  most  typical  thing 

1 20 


THE     GREAT    POPULARITY 

about  It  is  the  title.  There  seems  no  reason  in  par- 
ticular, at  the  first  and  most  literal  glance,  why  the 
story  should  be  called  after  the  Old  Curiosity  Shop. 
Only  two  of  the  characters  have  anything  to  do 
with  such  a  shop,  and  they  leave  us  for  ever  in  the 
first  few  pages.  It  is  as  if  Thackeray  had  called 
the  whole  novel  of  "  Vanity  Fair  "  "  Miss  Pinker- 
ton's  Academy."  It  is  as  if  Scott  had  given  the 
whole  story  of  "  The  Antiquary "  the  title  of 
"  The  Hawes  Inn."  But  when  we  feel  the  situa- 
tion with  more  fidelity  we  realize  that  this  title 
is  something  in  the  nature  of  a  key  to  the  whole 
Dickens  romance.  His  tales  always  started  from 
some  splendid  hint  in  the  streets.  And  shops,  per- 
haps the  most  poetical  of  all  things,  often  set  off 
his  fancy  galloping.  Every  shop,  in  fact,  was  to 
him  the  door  of  romance.  i\mong  all  the  huge 
serial  schemes  of  which  we  have  spoken,  It  is  a 
matter  of  wonder  that  he  never  started  an  endless 
periodical  called  "  The  Street,"  and  divided  It 
into  shops.  He  could  have  written  an  exquisite 
romance  called  "The  Baker's  Shop";  another 
called  "The  Chemist's  Shop";  another  called 
"  The  Oil  Shop,"  to  keep  company  with  "  The  Old 
Curiosity  Shop."  Some  incomparable  baker  he 
Invented  and  forgot.  Some  gorgeous  chemist 
might  have  been.     Some  more  than  mortal  oil- 

121 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

man  is  lost  to  us  for  ever.  This  Old  Curiosity 
Shop  he  did  happen  to  linger  by:  its  tale  he  did 
happen  to  tell. 

Around  ''  Little  Nell,"  of  course,  a  controversy 
raged  and  rages;  some  implored  Dickens  not  to 
kill  her  at  the  end  of  the  story:  some  regret  that 
he  did  not  kill  her  at  the  beginning.  To  me  the 
chief  interest  in  this  young  person  lies  in  the  fact 
that  she  is  an  example,  and  the  most  celebrated 
example  of  what  must  have  been,  I  think,  a  per- 
sonal peculiarity,  perhaps  a  personal  experience  of 
Dickens.  There  is,  of  course,  no  paradox  at  all 
In  saying  that  If  we  find  in  a  good  book  a  wildly 
Impossible  character  it  is  very  probable  indeed  that 
it  was  copied  from  a  real  person.  This  is  one  of 
the  commonplaces  of  good  art  criticism.  For  al- 
though people  talk  of  the  restraints  of  fact  and  the 
freedom  of  fiction,  the  case  for  most  artistic  pur- 
poses Is  quite  the  other  way.  Nature  Is  as  free  as 
air :  art  Is  forced  to  look  probable.  There  may  be 
a  million  things  that  do  happen,  and  yet  only  one 
thing  that  convinces  us  as  likely  to  happen.  Out 
of  a  million  possible  things  there  may  be  only  one 
appropriate  thing.  I  fancy,  therefore,  that  many 
stiff,  unconvincing  characters  are  copied  from  the 
wild  freak-show  of  real  life.  And  In  many  parts 
,of.  Dickens's  work  there  Is  evidence  of  some  pecu- 

.122 


THE    GREAT    POPULARITY 

liar  affection  on  his  part  for  a  strange  sort  of  little 
girl;  a  little  girl  with  a  premature  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility and  duty;  a  sort  of  saintly  precocity. 
Did  he  know  some  little  girl  of  this  kind?  Did  she 
die,  perhaps,  and  remain  In  his  memory  In  colours 
too  ethereal  and  pale?  In  any  case  there  are  a 
great  number  of  them  In  his  works.  Little  Dorrit 
was  one  of  them,  and  Florence  Dombey  with  her 
brother,  and  even  Agnes  In  Infancy;  and,  of  course. 
Little  Nell.  And,  In  any  case,  one  thing  Is  evi- 
dent; whatever  charm  these  children  may  have 
they  have  not  the  charm  of  childhood.  They  are 
not  little  children :  they  are  "  little  mothers."  The 
beauty  and  divinity  in  a  child  lie  In  his  not  being 
worried,  not  being  conscientious,  not  being  like 
Little  Nell.  Little  Nell  has  never  any  of  the 
sacred  bewilderment  of  a  baby.  She  never  wears 
that  face,  beautiful  but  almost  half-witted,  with 
which  a  real  child  half  understands  that  there  Is 
evil  In  the  universe. 

As  usual,  however,  little  as  the  story  has  to  do 
with  the  title,  the  splendid  and  satisfying  pages 
have  even  less  to  do  with  the  story.  Dick  Swivel- 
ler  is  perhaps  the  noblest  of  all  the  noble  creations 
of  Dickens.  He  has  all  the  overw^helmlng  absur- 
dity of  Mantalini,  with  the  addition  of  being 
human  and  credible,  for  he  knows  he  is  absurd. 

123 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

His  high-falutin  is  not  done  because  he  seriously 
thinks  it  right  and  proper,  like  that  of  Mr.  Snod- 
grass,  nor  is  it  done  because  he  thinks  it  will  serve 
his  turn,  like  that  of  Mr.  Pecksniff,  for  both  these 
beliefs  are  improbable;  it  is  done  because  he  really 
loves  high-falutin,  because  he  has  a  lonely  literary 
pleasure  in  exaggerative  language.  Great  draughts 
of  words  are  to  him  like  great  draughts  of  wine 
— pungent  and  yet  refreshing,  light  and  yet  leav- 
ing him  in  a  glow.  In  unerring  instinct  for  the 
perfect  folly  of  a  phrase  he  has  no  equal,  even 
among  the  giants  of  Dickens.  "  I  am  sure,"  says 
Miss  Wackles,  when  she  had  been  flirting  with 
Cheggs,  the  market-gardener,  and  reduced  Mr. 
Swiveller  to  Byronic  renunciation,  "  I  am  sure  I'm 
very  sorry  if — "  "  Sorry,"  said  Mr.  Swiveller, 
"  sorry  In  the  possession  of  a  Cheggs !  "  The 
abyss  of  bitterness  Is  unfathomable.  Scarcely  less 
precious  Is  the  pose  of  Mr.  Swiveller  when  he 
Imitates  the  stage  brigand.  After  crying,  "  Some 
wine  here !  Ho !  "  he  hands  the  flagon  to  himself 
with  profound  humility,  and  receives  It  haughtily. 
Perhaps  the  very  best  scene  In  the  book  Is  that 
between  Mr.  Swiveller  and  the  single  gentleman 
with  whom  he  endeavours  to  remonstrate  for  hav- 
ing remained  In  bed  all  day:  "We  cannot  have 
single  gentlemen  coming  Into  the  place  and  sleep- 

124 


THE    GREAT    POPULARITY 

ing  like  double  gentlemen  without  paying  extra. 
An  equal  amount  of  slumber  was  never 
got  out  of  one  bed,  and  if  you  want  to  sleep  like 
that  you  must  pay  for  a  double-bedded  room.'^ 
His  relations  with  the  Marchioness  are  at  once 
purely  romantic  and  purely  genuine ;  there  is  noth- 
ing even  of  Dickens's  legitimate  exaggerations 
about  them.  A  shabby,  larky,  good-natured  clerk 
would,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  spend  hours  in  the 
society  of  a  little  servant  girl  If  he  found  her  about 
the  house.  It  would  arise  partly  from  a  dim  kind- 
liness, and  partly  from  that  mysterious  Instinct 
which  is  sometimes  called,  mistakenly,  a  love 
of  low  company — that  mysterious  Instinct  which 
makes  so  many  men  of  pleasure  find  something 
soothing  In  the  society  of  uneducated  people,  par- 
ticularly uneducated  women.  It  is  the  instinct 
which  accounts  for  the  otherwise  unaccountable 
popularity  of  barmaids. 

And  still  the  pot  of  that  huge  popularity  boiled. 
In  1 841  another  novel  was  demanded,  and  "  Bar- 
naby  Rudge  "  supplied.  It  is  chiefly  of  interest  as 
an  embodiment  of  that  other  element  in  Dickens, 
the  picturesque  or  even  the  pictorial.  Barnaby 
Rudge,  the  Idiot  with  his  rags  and  his  feathers  and 
his  raven,  the  bestial  hangman,  the  blind  mob — 
all  make  a  picture,  though  they  hardly  make  a 

125 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

novel.  One  touch  there  Is  In  It  of  the  richer  and 
more  humorous  Dickens,  the  boy-conspirator,  Mr. 
Sim  Tappertlt.  But  he  might  have  been  treated 
with  more  sympathy — with  as  much  sympathy,  for 
Instance,  as  Mr.  Dick  Swiveller;  for  he  Is  only 
the  romantic  guttersnipe,  the  bright  boy  at  the 
particular  age  when  It  Is  most  fascinating  to  found 
a  secret  society  and  most  difficult  to  keep  a  secret. 
And  If  ever  there  was  a  romantic  guttersnipe  on 
earth  It  was  Charles  Dickens.  "  Barnaby  Rudge  " 
is  no  more  an  historical  novel  than  Sim's  secret 
league  was  a  political  movement;  but  they  are  both 
beautiful  creations.  ?^hen  all  is  said,  however,  the 
main  reason  for  mentioning  the  work  here  Is  that 
It  IS  the  next  bubble  in  the  pot,  the  next  thing  that 
burst  out  of  that  whirling,  seething  head.  The 
tide  of  it  rose  and  smoked  and  sang  till  it  boiled 
over  the  pot  of  Britain  and  poured  over  all  Amer- 
ica. In  the  January  of  1842  he  set  out  for  the 
United  States. 


126 


CHAPTER    VI 
DICKENS  AND  AMERICA 

The  essential  of  Dickens's  character  was  the  con- 
junction of  common  sense  with  uncommon  sensi- 
bility. The  two  things  are  not,  Indeed,  in  such 
an  antithesis  as  Is  commonly  imagined.  Great 
English  literary  authorities,  such  as  Jane  Austen 
and  Mr.  Chamberlain,  have  put  the  word  "  sense  " 
and  the  word  "  sensibility  "  In  a  kind  of  opposi- 
tion to  each  other.  But  not  only  are  they  not 
opposite  words:  they  are  actually  the  same  word. 
They  both  mean  receptiveness  or  approachability 
by  the  facts  outside  us.  To  have  a  sense  of  colour 
Is  the  same  as  to  have  a  sensibility  to  colour.  A 
person  who  realizes  that  beef-steaks  are  appetiz- 
ing shows  his  sensibility.  A  person  who  realizes 
that  moonrlse  Is  romantic  shows  his  sense.  But  It 
is  not  difficult  to  see  the  meaning  and  need  of  the 
popular  distinction  between  sensibility  and  sense, 
particularly  In  the  form  called  common  sense. 
Common  sense  Is  a  sensibility  duly  distributed  In 
all  normal  directions;  sensibility  has  come  to  mean 
a  specialized  sensibility  In  one.     This  is  unfortu- 

127 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

nate,  for  it  Is  not  the  sensibility  that  Is  bad,  but 
the  specializing;  that  Is,  the  lack  of  sensibility  to 
everything  else.  A  young  lady  who  stays  out  all 
night  to  look  at  the  stars  should  not  be  blamed 
for  her  sensibility  to  starlight,  but  for  her  insen- 
sibility to  other  people.  A  poet  who  recites  his 
own  verses  from  ten  to  five  with  the  tears  rolling 
down  his  face  should  decidedly  be  rebuked  for  his 
lack  of  sensibility — his  lack  of  sensibility  to  those 
grand  rhythms  of  the  social  harmony,  crudely 
called  manners.  For  all  politeness  Is  a  long  poem, 
since  It  Is  full  of  recurrences.  This  balance  of  all 
the  sensibilities  we  call  sense;  and  It  Is  In  this 
capacity  that  it  becomes  of  great  Importance  as  an 
attribute  of  the  character  of  Dickens. 

Dickens,  I  repeat,  had  common  sense  and  un- 
common sensibility.  That  is  to  say,  the  proportion 
of  interests  in  him  was  about  the  same  as  that  of 
an  ordinary  man,  but  he  felt  all  of  them  more 
excitedly.  This  Is  a  distinction  not  easy  for  us  to 
keep  In  mind,  because  we  hear  to-day  chiefly  of 
two  types,  the  dull  man  who  likes  ordinary  things 
mildly,  and  the  extraordinary  man  who  likes  ex- 
traordinary things  wildly.  ;But  Dickens  liked 
quite  ordinary  things ;  he  merely  made  an  extraor- 
dinary fuss  about  them.  *  His  excitement  was  some- 
times like  an  epileptic  fit;  but  It  must  not  be  con- 

128 


DICKExNS    AND    AMERICA 

fused  with  the  fury  of  the  man  of  one  idea  or  one 
hne  of  Ideas.  He  had  the  excess  of  the  eccentric, 
but  not  the  defects,  the  narrowness.  Even  when 
he  raved  Hke  a  maniac  he  did  not  rave  Hke  a 
monomaniac.  He  had  no  particular  spot  of  sen- 
slblHty  or  spot  of  insensibility:  he  was  merely  a 
normal  man  minus  a  normal  self-command.  He 
had  no  special  point  of  mental  pain  or  repugnance, 
like  Ruskin's  horror  of  steam  and  Iron,  or  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw's  permanent  irritation  against  ro- 
mantic love.  He  was  annoyed  at  the  ordinary 
annoyances:  only  he  was  more  annoyed  than  was 
necessary.  He  did  not  desire  strange  delights, 
blue  wine  or  black  women  with  Baudelaire,  or 
cruel  sights  east  of  Suez  with  Mr.  Kipling.  He 
wanted  what  a  healthy  man  wants,  only  he  was 
ill  with  wanting  it.  To  understand  him,  in  a  word, 
we  must  keep  well  in  mind  the  medical  distinction 
between  delicacy  and  disease.  Perhaps  we  shall 
comprehend  it  and  him  more  clearly  if  we  think 
of  a  woman  rather  than  a  man.  There  was  much 
that  was  feminine  about  Dickens,  and  nothing 
more  so  than  this  abnormal  normality.  A  woman 
Is  often,  in  comparison  with  a  man,  at  once  more 
sensitive  and  more  sane. 

This  distinction  must  be  especially  remembered 
In  all  his  quarrels.    And  it  must  be  most  especially 

129 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

remembered  In  what  may  be  called  his  great  quar- 
rel with  America,  which  we  have  now  to  approach. 
The  whole  matter  is  so  typical  of  Dickens's  atti- 
tude to  everything  and  anything,  and  especially  of 
Dickens's  attitude  to  anything  political,  that  I  may 
ask  permission  to  approach  the  matter  by  another, 
a  somewhat  long  and  curving  avenue. 

Common  sense  Is  a  fairy  thread,  thin  and  faint, 
and  as  easily  lost  as  gossamer.  Dickens  (in  large 
matters)  never  lost  it.  Take,  as  an  example,  his 
political  tone  or  drift  throughout  his  life.  His 
views,  of  course,  may  have  been  right  or  wrong; 
the  reforms  he  supported  may  have  been  successful 
or  otherwise:  that  Is  not  a  matter  for  this  book. 
But  If  we  compare  him  with  the  other  men  that 
wanted  the  same  things  (or  the  other  men  that 
wanted  the  other  things)  we  feel  a  startling  ab- 
sence of  cant,  a  startling  sense  of  humanity  as  it 
Is,  and  of  the  eternal  weakness.  He  was  a  fierce 
democrat,  but  In  his  best  vein  he  laughed  at  the 
cocksure  Radical  of  common  life,  the  red-faced 
man  who  said,  "Prove  It!''  when  anybody  said 
anything.  He  fought  for  the  right  to  elect;  but 
he  would  not  whitewash  elections.  He  believed  in 
parliamentary  government;  but  he  did  not,  like 
our  contemporary  newspapers,  pretend  that  par- 
liament Is  something  much  more  heroic  and  im- 

130 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

posing  than  It  is.  He  fought  for  the  rights  of  the 
grossly  oppressed  Nonconformists;  but  he  spat  out 
of  his  mouth  the  unction  of  that  too  easy  serious- 
ness with  which  they  oiled  everything,  and  held  up 
to  them  like  a  horrible  mirror  the  foul  fat  face  of 
Chadband.  He  saw  that  Mr.  Podsnap  thought 
too  little  of  places  outside  England.  But  he  saw 
that  Mrs.  Jellaby  thought  too  much  of  them.  In 
the  last  book  he  wrote  he  gives  us,  In  Mr.  Honey- 
thunder,  a  hateful  and  wholesome  picture  of  all 
the  Liberal  catchwords  pouring  out  of  one  illib- 
eral man.  But  perhaps  the  best  evidence  of  this 
steadiness  and  sanity  is  the  fact  that,  dogmatic 
as  he  was,  he  never  tied  himself  to  any  passing 
dogma :  he  never  got  Into  any  cut  de  sac  of  civic 
or  economic  fanaticism:  he  went  down  the  broad 
road  of  the  Revolution.  He  never  admitted  that 
economically,  we  must  make  hells  of  workhouses, 
any  more  than  Rousseau  would  have  admitted  It. 
He  never  said  the  State  had  no  right  to  teach 
children  or  save  their  bones,  any  more  than  Dan- 
ton  would  have  said  It.  He  was  a  fierce  Radical ; 
but  he  was  never  a  Manchester  Radical.  He  used 
the  test  of  Utility,  but  he  was  never  a  Utilitarian. 
While  economists  were  writing  soft  words  he 
wrote  "  Hard  Times,"  which  Macaulay  called 
''  sullen  Socialism,"  because  it  was  not  complacent 

131 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

^Vhiggism.  But  Dickens  was  never  a  Socialist  any 
more  than  he  was  an  Individualist;  and,  whatever 
else  he  was,  he  certainly  was  not  sullen.  He  was 
not  even  a  politician  of  any  kind.  He  was 
simply  a  man  of  very  clear,  airy  judgment  on 
things  that  did  not  Inflame  his  private  temper,  and 
he  perceived  that  any  theory  that  tried  to  run  the 
living  State  entirely  on  one  force  and  motive  was 
probably  nonsense.  Whenever  the  Liberal  philos- 
ophy had  embedded  In  It  something  hard  and 
heavy  and  lifeless,  by  an  Instinct  he  dropped  It  out. 
He  was  too  romantic,  perhaps,  but  he  would  have 
to  do  only  with  real  things.  He  may  have  cared 
too  much  about  Liberty.  But  he  cared  nothing 
about  "  Lalssez  falre." 

Now,  among  many  Interests  of  his  contact  with 
America  this  Interest  emerges  as  Infinitely  the 
largest  and  most  striking,  that  It  gave  a  final  ex- 
ample of  this  queer,  unexpected  coolness  and  can- 
dour of  his,  this  abrupt  and  sensational  rationality. 
Apart  altogether  from  any  question  of  the  accu- 
racy of  his  picture  of  America,  the  American  Indig- 
nation was  particularly  natural  and  Inevitable. 
For  the  large  circumstances  of  the  age  must  be 
taken  Into  account.  At  the  end  of  the  previous 
epoch  the  whole  of  our  Christian  civilization  had 
been  startled  from  Its  sleep  by  trumpets  to  take 

131 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

sides  In  a  bewildering  Armageddon,  often  wltL^ 
eyes  still  misty.  Germany  and  Austria  found 
themselves  on  the  side  of  the  old  order,  France 
and  America  on  the  side  of  the  new.  England,  as 
at  the  Reformation,  took  up  eventually  a  dark 
middle  position,  maddeningly  difficult  to  define. 
She  created  a  democracy,  but  she  kept  an  aristoc- 
racy: she  reformed  the  House  of  Commons,  but 
left  the  magistracy  (as  It  is  still)  a  mere  league 
of  gentlemen  against  the  world.  But  underneath 
all  this  doubt  and  compromise  there  was  in  Eng- 
land a  great  and  perhaps  growing  mass  of  dog- 
matic democracy;  certainly  thousands,  probably 
millions  expected  a  Republic  in  fifty  years.  And 
for  these  the  first  instinct  was  obvious.  The  first 
instinct  was  to  look  across  the  Atlantic  to  where 
lay  a  part  of  ourselves  already  Republican,  the  van 
of  the  advancing  English  on  the  road  to  liberty. 
Nearly  all  the  great  Liberals  of  the  nineteenth 
century  enormously  idealized  America.  On  the 
other  hand  to  the  Americans,  fresh  from  their 
first  epic  of  arms,  the  defeated  mother  country, 
with  its  coronets  and  county  magistrates,  was 
only  a  broken  feudal  keep. 

So  much  is  self-evident.  But  nearly  halfway 
through  the  nineteenth  century  there  came  out  of 
England  the  voice  of  a  violent  satirist.     In  its 


C2.3 


\ 


I 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

political  quality  It  seemed  like  the  half-choked  cry 
iof  the  frustrated  republic.  It  had  no  patience  with 
'the  pretence  that  England  was  already  free,  that 
we  had  gained  all  that  was  valuable  from  the  Revo- 
lution. It  poured  a  cataract  of  contempt  on  the 
so-called  working  compromises  of  England,  on 
the  oligarchic  cabinets,  on  the  two  artificial  parties, 
on  the  governm.ent  offices,  on  the  J.P.'s,  on  the 
vestries,  on  the  voluntary  charities.  This  satirist 
was  Dickens,  and  it  must  be  remembered  that  he 
was  not  only  fierce,  but  uproariously  readable.  He 
really  damaged  the  things  he  struck  at,  a  very 
rare  thing.  He  stepped  up  to  the  grave  official 
of  the  vestry,  really  trusted  by  the  rulers,  really 
feared  like  a  god  by  the  poor,  and  he  tied  round 
his  neck  a  name  that  choked  him;  never  again 
now  can  he  be  anything  but  Bumble.  He  con- 
fronted the  fine  old  English  gentleman  who  gives 
his  patriotic  services  for  nothing  as  a  local  magis- 
trate, and  he  nailed  him  up  as  Nupklns,  an  owl  In 
open  day.  For  to  this  satire  there  Is  literally  no 
answer;  It  cannot  be  denied  that  a  man  like  Nup- 
klns can  be  and  Is  a  magistrate,  so  long  as  we 
adopt  the  amazing  method  of  letting  the  KCi  man 
of  a  district  actually  be  the  judge  In  It.  We  can 
only  avoid  the  vision  of  the  fact  by  shutting  our 
eyes,  and  Imagining  the  nicest  rich  man  we  can 

134 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

think  of;  and  that,  of  course,  Is  what  we  do.  But 
Dickens,  In  this  matter,  was  merely  realistic;  he 
merely  asked  us  to  look  on  Nupklns,  on  the  wild, 
strange  thing  that  we  had  made.  Thus  Dickens 
seemed  to  see  England  not  at  all  as  the  country 
where  freedom  slowly  broadened  down  from  pre- 
cedent to  precedent,  but  as  a  rubbish  heap  of  seven- 
teenth century  bad  habits  abandoned  by  every- 
body else.  That  is,  he  looked  at  England  almost 
with  the  eyes  of  an  American  democrat. 

And  so,  when  the  voice,  swelling  In  volume, 
reached  America  and  the  Americans,  the  Ameri- 
cans said,  "  Here  is  a  man  who  will  hurry  the  old 
country  along,  and  tip  her  kings  and  beadles  into 
the  sea.  Let  him  come  here,  and  we  will  show  him 
a  race  of  free  men  such  as  he  dreams  of,  alive  upon 
the  ancient  earth.  Let  him  come  here  and  tell 
the  English  of  the  divine  democracy  towards  which 
he  drives  them.  There  he  has  a  monarchy  and  an 
oligarchy  to  make  game  of.  Here  Is  a  republic 
for  him  to  praise.*'  It  seemed,  indeed,  a  very 
natural  sequel,  that  having  denounced  undemo- 
cratic England  as  the  wilderness,  he  should  an- 
noi,u  X  democratic  America  as  the  promised  land. 
Any  ordinary  person  would  have  prophesied  that 
as  he  had  pushed  his  rage  at  the  old  order  almost 
to  the  edge  of  rant,  he  would  push  his  encomium 

135 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

of  the  new  order  almost  to  the  edge  of  cant.  Amid 
a  roar  of  republican  idealism,  compliments,  hope, 
and  anticipatory  gratitude,  the  great  democrat  en- 
tered the  great  democracy.  He  looked  about  him; 
he  saw  a  complete  America,  unquestionably  pro- 
gressive, unquestionably  self-governing.  Then, 
with  a  more  than  American  coolness,  and  a  more 
than  American  impudence,  he  sat  down  and  wrote 
*'  Martin  Chuzzlewit."  That  tricky  and  perverse 
sanity  of  his  had  mutinied  again.  Common  sense 
'is  a  wild  thing,  savage,  and  beyond  rules;  and  it 
'had  turned  on  them  and  rent  them. 

The  main  course  of  action  was  as  follows;  and 
it  is  right  to  record  it  before  we  speak  of  the  jus- 
tice of  it.  When  I  speak  of  his  sitting  down  and 
writing  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit,"  I  use,  of  course,  an 
elliptical  expression.  He  wrote  the  notes  of  the 
American  part  of  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit  "  while 
he  was  still  in  America ;  but  it  was  a  later  decision 
presumably  that  such  impressions  should  go  into 
a  book,  and  it  was  little  better  than  an  afterthought 
that  they  should  go  into  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit." 
Dickens  had  an  uncommonly  bad  habit  (artistic- 
ally speaking)  of  altering  a  story  in  the  middle  as 
he  did  in  the  case  of  "  Our  Mutual  Friend."  And 
'  it  is  on  record  that  he  only  sent  young  Martin 
to  America  because  he  did  not  know  what  else 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

to  do  with  him,  and  because  (to  say  truth)  the 
sales  were  falling  off.  But  the  first  action,  which 
Americans  regarded  as  an  equally  hostile  one,  was 
the  publication  of  '^  American  Notes,"  the  history 
of  which  should  first  be  given.  His  notion  of  visit- 
ing America  had  come  to  him  as  a  very  vague 
notion,  even  before  the  appearance  of  "  The  Old 
Curiosity  Shop."  But  It  had  grown  in  him  through 
the  whole  ensuing  period  in  the  plaguing  and  per- 
sistent way  that  ideas  did  grow  in  him  and  live 
with  him.  He  contended  against  the  idea  in  a 
certain  manner.  He  had  much  to  induce  him  to 
contend  against  it.  Dickens  was  by  this  time  not 
only  a  husband,  but  a  father,  the  father  of  several 
children,  and  their  existence  made  a  difficulty  In 
itself.  His  wife,  he  said,  cried  whenever  the  pro- 
ject was  mentioned.  But  It  was  a  point  in  him 
that  he  could  never,  with  any  satisfaction,  part 
with  a  project.  He  had  that  restless  optimism, 
that  kind  of  nervous  optimism,  which  would  al- 
ways tend  to  say  "  Yes  " ;  which  is  stricken  with  an 
immortal  repentance,  if  ever  it  says  "  No."  The 
idea  of  seeing  America  might  be  doubtful,  but  the 
idea  of  not  seeing  America  was  dreadful.  "  To 
miss  this  opportunity  would  be  a  sad  thing,"  he 
says.  ".  .  .  God  willing,  I  think  it  must  be  man- 
aged  somehow ! ''      It   was   managed   somehow. 

137 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

First  of  all  he  wanted  to  take  his  children  as  well 
as  his  wife.  Final  obstacles  to  this  fell  upon  him, 
but  they  did  not  frustrate  him.  A  serious  Illness 
fell  on  him;  but  that  did  not  frustrate  him.  He 
sailed  for  America  In  1842. 

He  landed  In  America,  and  he  liked  It.  As 
John  Forster  very  truly  says.  It  Is  due  to  him,  as 
well  as  to  the  great  country  that  welcomed  him, 
that  his  first  good  Impression  should  be  recorded, 
and  that  It  should  be  "  considered  independently 
of  any  modification  It  afterwards  underwent." 
But  the  modification  It  afterwards  underwent  was, 
as  I  have  said  above,  simply  a  sudden  kicking 
against  cant,  that  Is,  against  repetition.  He  was 
quite  ready  to  believe  that  all  Americans  were 
free  men.  He  would  have  believed  it  if  they  had 
not  all  told  him  so.  He  was  quite  prepared  to  be 
pleased  with  America.  He  would  have  been  pleased 
with  It  If  It  had  not  been  so  much  pleased  with 
Itself.  The  "modification"  his  view  underwent  did 
not  arise  from  any  "  modification  "  of  America  as 
he  first  saw  It.  His  admiration  did  not  change  be- 
cause America  changed.  It  changed  because 
America  did  not  change.  The  Yankees  enraged 
him  at  last,  not  by  saying  different  things,  but  by 
saying  the  same  things.  They  were  a  republic; 
they  were  a  new  and  vigorous  nation;  it  seemed 

138 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

natural  that  they  should  say  so  to  a  famous  for- 
eigner first  stepping  on  to  their  shore.  But  it 
seemed  maddening  that  they  should  say  so  to  each 
other  in  every  car  and  drinking  saloon  from  morn- 
ing till  night.  It  was  not  that  the  Americans  In 
any  way  ceased  from  praising  him.  It  was  rather 
that  they  went  on  praising  him.  It  was  not  merely 
that  their  praises  of  him  sounded  beautiful  when 
he  first  heard  them.  Their  praises  of  themselves 
sounded  beautiful  when  he  first  heard  them.  That 
democracy  was  grand,  and  that  Charles  Dickens* 
was  a  remarkable  person,  were  two  truths  that* 
he  certainly  never  doubted  to  his  dying  day.  But, 
as  I  say,  it  was  a  soulless  repetition  that  stung  his 
sense  of  humour  out  of  sleep ;  It  woke  like  a  wild 
beast  for  hunting,  the  lion  of  his  laughter.  He 
had  heard  the  truth  once  too  often.  He  had 
heard  the  truth  for  the  nine  hundred  and  ninety- 
ninth  time,  and  he  suddenly  saw  that  It  was  false- 
hood. 

It  Is  true  that  a  particular  circumstance  sharp- 
ened and  defined  his  disappointment.  He  felt 
very  hotly,  as  he  felt  everything,  whether  selfish 
or  unselfish,  the  Injustice  of  the  American  piracies 
of  English  literature,  resulting  from  the  American 
copyright  laws.  He  did  not  go  to  America  with 
any  Idea  of  discussing  this;  when,  some  time  after- 

139 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

wards,  somebody  said  that  he  did,  he  violently 
rejected  the  view  as  only  describable  "  in  one  of 
the  shortest  words  in  the  English  language."  But 
his  entry  into  America  was  almost  triumphal;  the 
rostrum  or  pulpit  was  ready  for  him;  he  felt 
strong  enough  to  say  anything.  He  had  been  most 
warmly  entertained  by  many  American  men  of 
letters,  especially  by  Washington  Irving,  and  In 
his  consequent  glow  of  confidence  he  stepped  up 
to  the  dangerous  question  of  American  copyright. 
He  made  many  speeches  attacking  the  American 
law  and  theory  of  the  matter  as  unjust  to  English 
writers  and  to  American  readers.  The  effect  ap- 
pears to  have  astounded  him.  "  I  believe  there 
Is  no  country,"  he  writes,  "  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
where  there  Is  less  freedom  of  opinion  on  any 
subject  in  reference  to  which  there  Is  a  broad  differ- 
ence of  opinion  than  In  this.  There !  I  write  the 
words  with  reluctance,  disappointment,  and  sor- 
row; but  I  believe  It  from  the  bottom  of  my  soul. 
.  .  .  The  notion  that  I,  a  man  alone  by  myself 
in  America,  should  venture  to  suggest  to  the  Amer- 
icans that  there  was  one  point  on  which  they  were 
neither  just  to  their  own  countrymen  nor  to  us, 
actually  struck  the  boldest  dumb!  Washington 
Irving,  Prescott,  Hoffman,  Bryant,  Halleck,  Dana, 
Washington  Allston — every  man  who  writes  in 

140 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

this  country  Is  devoted  to  the  question,  and  not  one 
of  them  dares  to  raise  his  voice  and  complain  of 
the  atrocious  state  of  the  law.  .  .  .  The  wonder 
is  that  a  breathing  man  can  be  found  with  temerity 
enough  to  suggest  to  the  Americans  the  possibility 
of  their  having  done  wrong.  I  wish  you  could 
have  seen  the  faces  that  I  saw  down  both  sides 
of  the  table  at  Hartford  when  I  began  to  talk 
about  Scott.  I  wish  you  could  have  heard  how 
I  gave  it  out.  My  blood  so  boiled  when  I  thought 
of  the  monstrous  Injustice  that  I  felt  as  if  I  were 
twelve  feet  high  when  I  thrust  it  down  their 
throats." 

That  is  almost  a  portrait  of  Dickens.  We  can 
almost  see  the  erect  little  figure,  its  face  and  hair 
like  a  flame. 

For  such  reasons,  among  others,  Dickens  was 
angry  with  America.  But  if  America  was  angry 
with  Dickens,  there  were  also  reasons  for  it.  I 
do  not  think  that  the  rage  against  his  copyright 
speeches  was,  as  he  supposed,  merely  national  Inso- 
lence and  self-satisfaction.  America  is  a  mystery 
to  any  good  Englishman;  but  I  think  Dickens 
managed  somehow  to  touch  it  on  a  queer  nerve. 
There  is  one  thing,  at  any  rate,  that  must  strike 
all  Englishmen  who  have  the  good  fortune  to  have 
American  friends;  that  is,  that  while  there  is  no 

141 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

materialism  so  crude  or  so  material  as  American 
materialism,  there  is  also  no  idealism  so  crude  or 
so  ideal  as  American  idealism.  America  will  al- 
ways affect  an  Englishman  as  being  soft  in  the 
wrong  place  and  hard  in  the  wrong  place;  coarse 
exactly  where  all  civilized  men  are  delicate,  deli- 
cate exactly  where  all  grown-up  men  are  coarse. 
Some  beautiful  ideal  runs  through  this  people,  but 
it  runs  aslant.  The  only  existing  picture  in  which 
the  thing  I  mean  has  been  embodied  Is  in  Steven- 
son's "  Wrecker,"  In  the  blundering  delicacy  of 
Jim  PInkerton.  America  has  a  new  delicacy,  a 
coarse,  rank  refinement.  But  there  is  another  way 
of  embodying  the  Idea,  and  that  is  to  say  this — 
that  nothing  Is  more  likely  than  that  the  Americans 
thought  it  very  shocking  in  Dickens,  the  divine 
author,  to  talk  about  being  done  out  of  money. 
'Nothing  would  be  more  American  than  to  expect 
'a  genius  to  be  too  high-toned  for  trade.  It  is 
certain  that  they  deplored  his  selfishness  in  the 
matter,  it  Is  probable  that  they  deplored  his  indeli- 
cacy. A  beautiful  young  dreamer,  with  flowing 
brown  hair,  ought  not  to  be  even  conscious  of  his 
copyrights.  For  it  is  quite  unjust  to  say  that  the 
Americans  worship  the  dollar.  They  really  do 
worship  intellect — another  of  the  passing  super- 
stitions of  our  time.  ^ 

^     142 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

If  America  had  then  this  PInkertonlan  pro- 
priety, this  new,  raw  sensibility,  Dickens  was  the 
man  to  rasp  it.  He  was  Its  precise  opposite  In 
every  way.  The  decencies  he  did  respect  were  old- 
fashioned  and  fundamental.  On  top  of  these  he 
had  that  lounging  liberty  and  comfort  which  can 
only  be  had  on  the  basis  of  very  old  conventions, 
like  the  carelessness  of  gentlemen  and  the  delibera- 
tion of  rustics.  He  had  no  fancy  for  being  strung 
up  to  that  taut  and  quivering  ideality  demanded 
by  American  patriots  and  public  speakers.  And 
there  was  something  else  also,  connected  especially 
with  the  question  of  copyright  and  his  own  pecu- 
niary claims.  Dickens  was  not  in  the  least  desirous 
of  being  thought  too  *'  high-souled  ''  to  want  his 
wages,  nor  was  he  in  the  least  ashamed  of  asking 
for  them.  Deep  In  him  (whether  the  modern 
reader  likes  the  quality  or  no)  was  a  sense  very 
strong  in  the  old  Radicals — very  strong  especially 
in  the  old  English  Radicals — a  sense  of  personal 
rights,  one's  own  rights  Included,  as  something  not 
merely  useful  but  sacred.  He  did  not  think  a  claim 
any  less  just  and  solemn  because  it  happened  to  be 
selfish;  he  did  not  divide  claims  into  selfish  and 
unselfish,  but  into  right  and  wrong.  It  is  signifi- 
cant that  when  he  asked  for  his  money,  he  never 
asked  for  it  with  that  shamefaced  cynicism,  that 

143 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

sort  of  embarrassed  brutality,  with  which  the  mod- 
ern man  of  the  world  mutters  something  about 
business  being  business  or  looking  after  number 
one.  He  asked  for  his  money  In  a  valiant  and 
ringing  voice,  like  a  man  asking  for  his  honour. 
While  his  American  critics  were  moaning  and 
sneering  at  his  interested  motives  as  a  disqualifi- 
cation, he  brandished  his  Interested  motives  like 
a  banner.  "  It  is  nothing  to  them,"  he  cries  In 
astonishment,  *'  that,  of  all  men  living,  I  am  the 
greatest  loser  by  it  "  (the  Copyright  Law).  "  It 
is  nothing  that  I  have  a  claim  to  speak  and  be 
heard."  The  thing  they  set  up  as  a  barrier  he 
actually  presents  as  a  passport.  They  think  that 
he,  of  all  men,  ought  not  to  speak  because  he  is 
Interested.  He  thinks  that  he,  of  all  men,  ought  to 
speak  because  he  is  wronged. 

But  this  particular  disappointment  with  America 
In  the  matter  of  the  tyranny  of  Its  public  opinion 
was  not  merely  the  expression  of  the  fact  that 
Dickens  was  a  typical  Englishman;  that  is,  a  man 
with  a  very  sharp  Insistence  upon  individual  free- 
dom. It  also  worked  back  ultimately  to  that 
larger  and  vaguer  disgust  of  which  I  have  spoken 
■ — the  disgust  at  the  perpetual  posturing  of  the 
people  before  a  mirror.  The  tvranny  was  irritat- 
ing, not  so  much  ber^^use  of  ^^'^  ciT^Arino-  it  inflicte'^ 

144 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

on  the  minority,  but  because  of  the  awful  ghmpses 
that  It  gave  of  the  huge  and  Imbecile  happiness  of 
the  majority.  The  very  vastness  of  the  vain  race 
enraged  him,  its  Immensity,  Its  unity.  Its  peace. 
He  was  annoyed  more  with  Its  contentment  than 
with  any  of  Its  discontents.  The  thought  of  that 
unthinkable  mass  of  millions,  every  one  of  them 
saying  that  Washington  was  the  greatest  man  on 
earth,  and  that  the  Queen  lived  In  the  Tower  of 
London,  rode  his  riotous  fancy  like  a  nightmare. 
But  to  the  end  he  retained  the  outlines  of  his 
original  republican  Ideal  and  lamented  over  Amer- 
ica not  as  being  too  Liberal,  but  as  not  being  Lib- 
eral enough.  Among  others,  he  used  these  some- 
what remarkable  words :  "  I  tremble  for  a  Radical 
coming  here,  unless  he  is  a  Radical  on  principle, 
by  reason  and  reflection,  and  from  the  sense  of 
right.  I  fear  that  If  he  were  anything  else  he 
would  return  home  a  Tory.  ...  I  say  no  more 
on  that  head  for  two  months  from  this  time,  save 
that  I  do  fear  that  the  heaviest  blow  ever  dealt  at 
liberty  will  be  dealt  by  this  country,  in  the  failure 
of  its  example  on  the  earth." 

We  are  still  waiting  to  see  if  that  prediction  has 
been  fulfilled;  but  nobody  can  say  that  it  has  been 
falsified. 

He  went  west  on  the  great  canals ;  he  went  south 

145 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

and  touched  the  region  of  slavery;  he  saw  America 
superficially  indeed,  but  as  a  whole.  And  the  great 
mass  of  his  experience  was  certainly  pleasant, 
though  he  vibrated  with  anticipatory  passion 
against  slave-holders,  though  he  swore  he  would 
accept  no  public  tribute  in  the  slave  country  (a 
resolve  which  he  broke  under  the  pressure  of  the 
politeness  of  the  south),  yet  his  actual  collisions 
with  slavery  and  its  upholders  were  few  and  brief. 
In  these  he  bore  himself  with  his  accustomed  vivac- 
ity and  fire,  but  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  con- 
vey the  impression  that  his  mental  reaction  against 
America  was  chiefly,  or  even  largely,  due  to  his 
horror  at  the  negro  problem.  Over  and  above  the 
cant  of  which  w^e  have  spoken,  the  weary  rush  of 
words,  the  chief  complaint  he  made  was  a  com- 
plaint against  bad  manners;  and  on  a  large  view 
his  anti-Americanism  would  seem  to  be  more 
founded  on  spitting  than  on  slavery.  When,  how- 
ever, it  did  happen  that  the  primary  morality  of 
man-owning  came  up  for  discussion,  Dickens  dis- 
played an  honourable  Impatience.  One  man,  full 
of  anti-abolltionlst  ardour,  buttonholed  him  and 
bombarded  him  with  the  well-known  argument  In 
defence  of  slavery,  that  It  was  not  to  the  financial 
Interest  of  a  slave-owner  to  damage  or  weaken  his 
own  slaves.     Dickens,  In  telling  the  story  of  this 

146 


DICKENS     AND    AMERICA 

interview,  writes  as  follows :  "  I  told  him  quietly 
that  it  was  not  a  man's  interest  to  get  drunk,  or 
to  steal,  or  to  game,  or  to  indulge  in  any  other 
vice;  but  he  did  indulge  in  it  for  all  that.  That 
cruelty  and  the  abuse  of  irresponsible  power  were 
two  of  the  bad  passions  of  human  nature,  with  the 
gratification  of  which  considerations  of  interest  or 
of  ruin  had  nothing  whatever  to  do.  .  .  ."  It 
is  hardly  possible  to  doubt  that  Dickens,  in  telling 
the  man  this,  told  him  something  sane  and  logical 
and  unanswerable.  But  it  is  perhaps  permissible 
to  doubt  whether  he  told  it  to  him  quietly. 

He  returned  home  in  the  spring  of  1842,  and  % 
in  the  later  part  of  the  year  his  "  American  Notes  "^  \ 
appeared,  and  the  cry  against  him  that  had  begun 
over  copyright  swelled  into  a  roar  in  his  rear.  Yet 
when  we  read  the  "  Notes  "  we  can  find  little 
offence  In  them,  and,  to  say  truth,  less  interest  than 
usual.  They  are  no  true  picture  of  America,  or 
even  of  his  vision  of  America,  and  this  for  two 
reasons.  First,  that  he  deliberately  excluded  from 
them  all  mention  of  that  copyright  question  which 
had  really  given  him  his  glimpse  of  how  tyrannical 
a  democracy  can  be.  Second,  that  here  he  chiefly 
criticizes  America  for  faults  which  are  not,  after 
all,  especially  American.  For  example,  he  Is  Indig- 
nant with  the  Inadequate  character  of  the  prisons, 

147 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

and  compares  them  unfavourably  with  those  In 
England,  controlled  by  Lieutenant  Tracey,  and 
by  Chesterton  at  Coldbath  Fields,  two  reformers 
of  prison  discipline  for  whom  he  had  a  high  re- 
gard. But  It  was  a  mere  accident  that  American 
gaols  were  Inferior  to  English.  There  was  and  Is 
nothing  In  the  American  spirit  to  prevent  their 
effecting  all  the  reforms  of  Tracey  and  Chester- 
ton, nothing  to  prevent  their  doing  anything  that 
money  and  energy  and  organization  can  do. 
America  might  have  (for  all  I  know,  does  have)  a 
prison  system  cleaner  and  more  humane  and  more 
efficient  than  any  other  in  the  world.  And  the 
evil  genius  of  America  might  still  remain — every- 
thing might  remain  that  makes  Pogram  or  Chol- 
lop  Irritating  or  absurd.  And  against  the  evil 
genius  of  America  Dickens  was  now  to  strike  a 
second  and  a  very  different  blow. 

In  January,  1843,  appeared  the  first  number  of 
the  novel  called  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit."  The 
earlier  part  of  the  book  and  the  end,  which  have 
no  connection  with  America  or  the  American  prob- 
lem, in  any  case  require  a  passing  word.  But  ex- 
cept for  the  two  gigantic  grotesques  on  each  side 
of  the  gateway  of  the  tale,  Pecksniff  and  Mrs. 
Gamp,  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit "  will  be  chiefly  ad- 
mired for  its  American  excursion.     It  Is  a  good 

148 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

satire  embedded  in  an  indifferent  novel.  Mrs. 
Gamp  Is,  Indeed,  a  sumptuous  study,  laid  on  in 
those  rich,  oily,  almost  greasy  colours  that  go  to 
make  the  English  comic  characters,  that  make  the 
very  diction  of  Falstaff  fat,  and  quaking  with  jolly 
degradation.  Pecksniff  also  is  almost  perfect,  and 
much  too  good  to  be  true.  The  only  other  thing 
to  be  noticed  about  him  is  that  here,  as  almost 
everywhere  else  In  the  novels,  the  best  figures  are 
at  their  best  when  they  have  least  to  do.  Dickens's 
characters  are  perfect  as  long  as  he  can  keep  them 
out  of  his  stories^  Bumble  Is  divine  until  a  dark 
and  practical  secret  Is  entrusted  to  him — as  if  any- 
body but  a  lunatic  would  entrust  a  secret  to  Bum- 
ble. MIcawber  Is  noble  when  he  is  doing  nothing; 
but  he  Is  quite  unconvincing  when  he  Is  spying  on 
Uriah  Heep,  for  obviously  neither  MIcawber  nor 
any  one  else  would  employ  MIcawber  as  a  private 
detective.  Similarly,  while  Pecksniff  Is  the  best 
thing  In  the  story,  the  story  Is  the  worst  thing  In 
Pecksniff.  His  plot  against  old  Martin  can  only 
be  described  by  saying  that  it  is  as  silly  as  old 
Martin's  plot  against  him.  His  fall  at  the  end 
Is  one  of  the  rare  falls  of  Dickens.  Surely  It  was 
not  necessary  to  take  Pecksniff  so  seriously.  Peck- 
sniff Is  a  merely  laughable  character;  he  Is  so  laugh- 
able that  he  is  lovable.     Why  take  such  trouble 

149       / 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

to  unmask  a  man  whose  mask  you  have  made 
transparent?  Why  collect  all  the  characters  to 
witness  the  exposure  of  a  man  In  whom  none  of  the 
characters  believe?  Why  toil  and  triumph  to 
have  the  laugh  of  a  man  who  was  only  made  to  be 
laughed  at? 

But  it  is  the  American  part  of  "  Martin  Chuz- 
zlewit  "  which  Is  our  concern,  and  which  is  memo- 
rable. It  has  the  air  of  a  great  satire;  but  if  it 
is  only  a  great  slander,  it  is  still  great.  His  serious 
book  on  America  was  merely  a  squib,  perhaps  a 
damp  squib.  In  any  case,  we  all  know  that  Amer- 
ica will  survive  such  serious  books.  But  his  fan- 
tastic book  may  survive  America.  It  may  survive 
America  as  "  The  Knights  "  has  survived  Athens. 
/'  Martin  Chuzzlewit  "  has  this  quality  of  great 
satire  that  the  critic  forgets  to  ask  whether  the 
portrait  is  true  to  the  original,  because  the  por- 
trait is  so  much  more  Important  than  the  original. 
Who  cares  whether  Aristophanes  correctly  de- 
scribes Kleon,  who  is  dead,  w^hen  he  so  perfectly 
describes  the  demagogue,  who  cannot  die?  Just 
as  little,  it  may  be,  will  some  future  age  care 
whether  the  ancient  civilization  of  the  west,  the 
lost  cities  of  New  York  and  St.  Louis,  were  fairly 
depicted  in  the  colossal  monument  of  Elijah 
Pogram.    For  there  is  much  more  In  the  American 

150 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

episodes  than  their  intoxicating  absurdity;  there  is 
more  than  humour  in  the  young  man  who  made 
the  speech  about  the  British  Lion,  and  said,  "  I 
taunt  that  lion.  Alone  I  dare  him;"  or  in  the 
other  man  who  told  Martin  that  when  he  said  that 
Queen  Victoria  did  not  live  in  the  Tower  of  Lon- 
don he  "  fell  into  an  error  not  uncommon  among 
his  countrymen."  He  has  his  finger  on  the  nerve 
of  an  evil  which  was  not  only  in  his  enemies,  but 
in  himself.  The  great  democrat  has  hold  of  one 
of  the  dangers  of  democracy.  The  great  optimist 
confronts  a  horrible  nightmare  of  optimism. 
Above  all,  the  genuine  Englishman  attacks  a  sin 
that  is  not  merely  American,  but  English  also. 
The  eternal,  complacent  iteration  of  patriotic  half-  / 
truths;  the  perpetual  buttering  of  one's  sell  all 
over  with  the  same  stale  butter;  above  all,  the  big 
defiances  of  small  enemies,  or  the  very  urgent  chal- 
lenges to  very  distant  enemies;  the  cowardice  so 
habitual  and  unconscious  that  It  wears  the  plumes 
of  courage — all  this  Is  an  English  temptation  as 
well  as  an  American  one.  ''  Martin  Chuzzlewit  " 
may  be  a  caricature  of  America.  America  may  be 
a  caricature  of  England.  But  in  the  gravest  col- 
lege, in  the  quietest  country  house  of  England, 
there  is  the  seed  of  the  same  essential  madness  that 
fills  Dickens's  book,  like  an  asylum,  with  brawling 

151 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

Chollops  and  raving  Jefferson  Bricks.  That  es- 
sential madness  Is  the  Idea  that  the  good  patriot 
Is  the  man  who  feels  at  ease  about  his  country. 
This  notion  of  patriotism  was  unknown  In  the  lit- 
tle pagan  republics  where  our  European  patriotism 
began.  It  was  unknown  In  the  Middle  Ages.  In 
the  eighteenth  century,  In  the  making  of  modern 
politics,  a  *'  patriot  "  meant  a  discontented  man. 
It  was  opposed  to  the  word  "  courtier,"  which 
meant  an  upholder  of  the  status  quo.  In  all  other 
modern  countries,  especially  In  countries  like 
France  and  Ireland,  where  real  difficulties  have 
been  faced,  the  word  "  patriot  "  means  something 
like  a  political  pessimist.  This  view  and  these 
countries  have  exaggerations  and  dangers  of  their 
own ;  but  the  exaggeration  and  danger  of  England 
Is  the  same  as  the  exaggeration  and  danger  of 
The  Watertoast  Gazette,  The  thing  which  Is 
rather  foolishly  called  the  Anglo-Saxon  civiliza- 
tion Is  at  present  soaked  through  with  a  weak  pride. 
It  uses  great  masses  of  men  not  to  procure  discus- 
sion but  to  procure  the  pleasure  of  unanimity;  It 
uses  masses  like  bolsters.  It  uses  Its  organs  of 
public  opinion  not  to  warn  the  public,  but  to  soothe 
It.  It  really  succeeds  not  only  In  Ignoring  the  rest 
of  the  world,  but  actually  In  forgetting  It.  And 
when  a  civilization  really  forgets  the  rest  of  the 

152 


DICKENS    AND    AMERICA 

world — lets  it  fall  as  something  obviously  dim 
and  barbaric — then  there  is  only  one  adjective  for 
the  ultimate  fate  of  that  civilization,  and  that 
adjective  is  "  Chinese." 

Martin  Chuzzlewlt's  America  is  a  mad-house: 
but  it  is  a  mad-house  we  are  all  on  the  road  to. 
For  completeness  and  even  comfort  are  almost  the 
definitions  of  Insanity.  The  lunatic  is_the  man  who 
lives  In  a  small  world  but  thinks  it  is  a  large  one : 
he  is  the  man  who  lives  In  a  tenth  of  the  truth, 
and  thinks  it  is  the  whole.  The  madman  cannot 
conceive  any  cosmos  outside  a  certain  tale  or  con- 
spiracy or  vision.  Hence  the  more  clearly  we  see 
the  world  divided  into  Saxons  and  non-Saxons,  Into 
our  splendid  selves  and  the  rest,  the  more  certain 
we  may  be  that  we  are  slowly  and  quietly  going 
mad.  The  more  plain  and  satisfying  our  state 
appears,  the  more  we  may  know  that  we  are  living 
in  an  unreal  world.  For  the  real  world  Is  not 
satisfying.  The  more  clear  become  the  colours 
and  facts  of  Anglo-Saxon  superiority,  the  more 
surely  we  may  know  we  are  In  a  dream.  For  the 
real  world  is  not  clear  or  plain.  The  real  world 
is  full  of  bracing  bewilderments  and  brutal  sur- 
prises. Comfort  is  the  blessing  and  the  curse  of 
the  English,  and  of  Americans  of  the  Pogram  type 
also.    With  them  it  is  a  loud  comfort,  a  wild  com- 

153 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

fort,  a  screaming  and  capering  comfort;  but  com- 
fort at  bottom  still.  For  there  Is  but  an  Inch  of 
difference  between  the  cushioned  chamber  and  the 
padded  cell. 


154 


CHAPTER    VII 

DICKENS  AND  CHRISTMAS 

In  the  July  of  1844  Dickens  went  on  an  Italian 
tour,  which  he  afterwards  summarized  in  the  book 
called  "  Pictures  from  Italy."  They  are,  of 
course,  very  vivacious,  but  there  is  no  great  need 
to  insist  on  them,  considered  as  Italian  sketches; 
there  is  no  need  whatever  to  worry  about  them  as 
a  phase  of  the  mind  of  Dickens  when  he  travelled 
out  of  England.  He  never  travelled  out  of  Eng- 
land. There  is  no  trace  in  all  these  amusing  pages 
that  he  really  felt  the  great  foreign  things  which 
lie  in  wait  for  us  in  the  south  of  Europe,  the  Latin 
civilization,  the  Catholic  Church,  the  art  of  the 
centre,  the  endless  end  of  Rome.  His  travels  are 
not  travels  in  Italy,  but  travels  In  Dickensland. 
He  sees  amusing  things;  he  describes  them  amus- 
ingly. But  he  would  have  seen  things  just  as  good 
in  a  street  in  Pimlico,  and  described  them  just  as 
well.  Few  things  were  racier  even  in  his  raciest 
novel,  than  his  description  of  the  marionette  play 
of  the  death  of  Napoleon.  Nothing  could  be  more 
perfect  than  the  figure  of  the  doctor,  which  had 

155 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

something  wrong  with  Its  wires,  and  hence  "  hov- 
ered about  the  couch  and  delivered  medical  opin- 
ions In  the  air."  Nothing  could  be  better  as  a 
catching  of  the  spirit  of  all  popular  drama  than 
the  colossal  depravity  of  the  wooden  Image  of 
"  Sir  Udson  Low."  But  there  Is  nothing  Italian 
about  It.  Dickens  would  have  made  just  as  good 
fun,  Indeed  just  the  same  fun,  of  a  Punch  and 
Judy  show  performing  In  Long  Acre  or  Lincoln's 
Inn  Fields. 

Dickens  uttered  just  and  sincere  satire  on  Plor- 
nlsh  and  Podsnap;  but  Dickens  was  as  English  as 
any  Podsnap  or  any  Plornlsh.  He  had  a  hearty 
humanltarlanism,  and  a  hearty  sense  of  justice  to 
all  nations,  so  far  as  he  understood  It.  But  that 
very  kind  of  humanltarlanism,  that  very  kind  of 
justice,  were  English.  He  was  the  Englishman  of 
the  type  that  made  Free  Trade,  the  most  English 
of  all  things,  since  it  was  at  once  calculating  and 
optimistic.  He  respected  catacombs  and  gondolas, 
but  that  very  respect  was  English.  He  wondered 
at  brigands  and  volcanoes,  but  that  very  wonder 
was  English.  The  very  conception  that  Italy  con- 
sists of  these  things  was  an  English  conception. 
The  root  things  he  never  understood,  the  Roman 
legend,  the  ancient  life  of  the  Mediterranean,  the 
world-old  civilization  of  the  vine  and  olive,  the 

156 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

mystery  of  the  Immutable  Church.  He  never 
understood  these  things,  and  I  am  glad  he  never 
understood  them:  he  could  only  have  understood 
them  by  ceasing  to  be  the  inspired  cockney  that  he 
was,  the  rousing  English  Radical  of  the  great 
Radical  age  In  England.  That  spirit  of  his  was 
one  of  the  things  that  we  have  had  which  were 
truly  national.  All  other  forces  we  have  borrowed, 
especially  those  which  flatter  us  most.  Imperial- 
ism Is  foreign,  socialism  Is  foreign,  militarism  is 
foreign,  education  is  foreign,  strictly  even  Liberal- 
ism Is  foreign.  But  Radicalism  was  our  own;  as 
English  as  the  hedge-rows. 

Dickens  abroad,  then,  was  for  all  serious  pur- 
poses simply  the  Englishman  abroad;  the  English- 
man abroad  Is  for  all  serious  purposes,  simply  the 
Englishman  at  home.  Of  this  generalization  one 
modification  must  be  made.  Dickens  did  feel  a 
direct  pleasure  In  the  bright  and  busy  exterior  of 
the  French  life,  the  clean  caps,  the  coloured  uni- 
forms, the  skies  like  blue  enamel,  the  little  green 
trees,  the  little  white  houses,  the  scene  picked  out 
In  primary  colours,  like  a  child's  picture-book. 
This  he  felt,  and  this  he  put  (by  a  stroke  of 
genius)  Into  the  mouth  of  Mrs.  LIrriper,  a  London 
landlady  on  a  holiday:  for  Dickens  always  knew 
that  It  Is  the  simple  and  not  the  subtle  who  feel 

157 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

differences;  and  he  saw  all  his  colours  through  the 
clear  eyes  of  the  poor.  And  in  thus  taking  to  his 
heart  the  streets  as  it  were,  rather  than  the  spires 
of  the  Continent,  he  showed  beyond  question  that 
combination  of  which  we  have  spoken — of  com- 
mon sense  with  uncommon  sensibility.  For  it  is 
for  the  sake  of  the  streets  and  shops  and  the  coats 
and  hats,  that  we  should  go  abroad;  they  are  far 
better  worth  going  to  see  than  the  castles  and 
cathedrals  and  Roman  camps.  For  the  wonders 
of  the  world  are  the  same  all  over  the  world,  at 
least  all  over  the  European  world.  Castles  that 
throw  valleys  in  shadow,  minsters  that  strike  the 
sky,  roads  so  old  that  they  seem  to  have  been  made 
by  the  gods,  these  are  in  all  Christian  countries. 
The  marvels  of  man  are  at  all  our  doors.  A 
labourer  hoeing  turnips  in  Sussex  has  no  need  to  be 
ignorant  that  the  bones  of  Europe  are  the  Roman 
roads.  A  clerk  living  in  Lambeth  has  no  need  not 
to  know  that  there  was  a  Christian  art  exuberant 
in  the  thirteenth  century;  for  only  across  the  river 
he  can  see  the  live  stones  of  the  Middle  Ages  surg- 
ing together  towards  the  stars.  But  exactly  the 
things  that  do  strike  the  traveller  as  extraordinary 
are  the  ordinary  things,  the  food,  the  clothes,  the 
vehicles;  the  strange  things  are  cosmopolitan,  the 
common  things  are  national  and  peculiar.   Cologne 

158 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

spire  Is  lifted  on  the  same  arches  as  Canterbury; 
but  the  thing  you  cannot  see  out  of  Germany  is 
a  German  beer-garden.  There  is  no  need  for  a 
Frenchman  to  go  to  look  at  Westminster  Abbey 
as  a  piece  of  English  architecture;  it  is  not,  in  the 
special  sense,  a  piece  of  English  architecture.  But 
a  hansom  cab  is  a  piece  of  English  architecture;  a 
thing  produced  by  the  peculiar  poetry  of  our  cities, 
a  symbol  of  a  certain  reckless  comfort  which  is 
really  English;  a  thing  to  draw  a  pilgrimage  of 
the  nations.  The  imaginative  Englishman  will  be 
found  all  day  In  a  cafe;  the  imaginative  Frenchman 
in  a  hansom  cab. 

This  sort  of  pleasure  Dickens  took  in  the  Latin 
life;  but  no  deeper  kind.  And  the  strongest  of  all 
possible  indications  of  his  fundamental  detachment 
from  it  can  be  found  in  one  fact.  A  great  part  of 
the  time  that  he  was  in  Italy  he  was  engaged  in 
writing  "  The  Chimes,"  and  such  Christmas  tales, 
tales  of  Christmas  in  the  English  towns,  tales  full 
of  fog  and  snow  and  hail  and  happiness. 

Dickens  could  find  in  any  street  divergences  be- 
tween man  and  man  deeper  than  the  divisions  of 
nations.  His  fault  was  to  exaggerate  differences. 
He  could  find  types  almost  as  distinct  as  separate 
tribes  of  animals  in  his  own  brain  and  his  own 
city,  those  two  homes  of  a  magnificent  chaos.    The 

159 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

only  two  southerners  Introduced  prominently  into 
his  novels,  the  two  in  "  Little  Dorrit,"  are  popular 
English  foreigners,  I  had  almost  said  stage  for- 
eigners. Villainy  is.  In  English  eyes,  a  southern 
trait,  therefore  one  of  the  foreigners  Is  villainous. 
Vivacity  is,  in  English  eyes,  another  southern  trait, 
therefore  the  other  foreigner  is  vivacious.  But  we 
can  see  from  the  outlines  of  both  that  Dickens 
did  not  have  to  go  to  Italy  to  get  them.  While 
poor  panting  millionaires,  poor  tired  earls  and 
poor  God-forsaken  American  men  of  culture  are 
plodding  about  Italy  for  literary  inspiration, 
Charles  Dickens  made  up  the  whole  of  that  Italian 
romance  (as  I  strongly  suspect)  from  the  faces 
of  two  London  organ-grinders. 

In  the  sunlight  of  the  southern  world,  he  was 
still  dreaming  of  the  firelight  of  the  north.  Among 
the  palaces  and  the  white  campanile,  he  shut  his 
eyes  to  see  Marylebone  and  dreamed  a  lovely 
dream  of  chimney-pots.  He  was  not  happy  he 
said,  without  streets.  The  very  foulness  and  smoke 
of  London  were  lovable  in  his  eyes  and  fill  his 
Christmas  tales  with  a  vivid  vapour.  In  the  clear 
skies  of  the  south  he  saw  afar  ofl[  the  fog  of  Lon- 
don like  a  sunset  cloud  and  longed  to  be  in  the 
core  of  it. 

This  Christmas  tone  of  Dickens,  in  connection 

1 60 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

with  his  travels  is  a  matter  that  can  only  be  ex- 
pressed by  a  parallel  with  one  of  his  other  works. 
Much  the  same  that  has  here  been  said  of  his 
"  Pictures  from  Italy  "  may  be  said  about  his 
"  Child's  History  of  England;"  with  the  differ- 
ence that  while  the  "  Pictures  from  Italy,"  do  in 
a  sense  add  to  his  fame,  the  "  History  of  England  " 
in  almost  every  sense  detracts  from  it.  But  the 
nature  of  the  limitation  is  the  same.  What  Dick- 
ens was  travelling  in  distant  lands,  that  he  was 
travelling  in  distant  ages;  a  sturdy,  sentimental 
English  Radical  with  a  large  heart  and  a  narrow 
mind.  He  could  not  help  falling  into  that  beset-\ 
ting  sin  or  weakness  of  the  modern  progressive,) 
the  habit  of  regarding  the  contemporary  questions 
as  the  eternal  questions  and  the  latest  word  as  the 
last.  He  could  not  get  out  of  his  head  the  instinc- 
tive conception  that  the  real  problem  before  St. 
Dunstan  was  whether  he  should  support  Lord  John 
Russell  or  Sir  Robert  Peel.  He  could  not  help 
seeing  the  remotest  peaks  lit  up  by  the  raging  bon- 
fire of  his  own  passionate  political  crisis.  He  lived 
for  the  instant  and  its  urgency;  that  is,  he  did  what 
St.  Dunstan  did.  He  lived  in  an  eternal  present 
like  all  simple  men.  It  is  indeed  "  A  Child's  His- 
tory of  England;  "  but  the  child  is  the  writer  and 
not  the  reader. 

i6i 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

But  Dickens  In  his  cheapest  cockney  utilitarian- 
ism, was  not  only  English,  but  unconsciously  his- 
toric. Upon  him  descended  the  real  tradition  of 
"  Merry  England,"  and  not  upon  the  pallid 
medlasvallsts  who  thought  they  were  reviving  It. 
The  Pre-Raphaelltes,  the  Gothlclsts,  the  admirers 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  had  In  their  subtlety  and  sad- 
ness the  spirit  of  the  present  day.  Dickens  had  In 
his  buffoonery  and  bravery  the  spirit  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  He  was  much  more  mediaeval  in  his  at- 
tacks on  medlaevalism  than  they  were  in  their 
defences  of  it.  It  was  he  who  had  the  things  of 
Chaucer,  the  love  of  large  jokes  and  long  stories 
and  brown  ale  and  all  the  white  roads  of  England. 
Like  Chaucer  he  loved  story  within  story,  every 
man  telling  a  tale.  Like  Chaucer  he  saw  some- 
thing openly  comic  In  men's  motley  trades.  Sam 
Weller  would  have  been  a  great  gain  to  the  Can- 
terbury Pilgrimage  and  told  an  admirable  story. 
Rossettl's  Damozel  would  have  been  a  great  bore, 
regarded  as  too  fast  by  the  Prioress  and  too  prig- 
gish by  the  Wife  of  Bath.  It  is  said  that  in  the 
somewhat  sickly  Victorian  revival  of  feudalism 
which  was  called  "  Young  England,"  a  nobleman 
hired  a  hermit  to  live  in  his  grounds.  It  is  also 
said  that  the  hermit  struck  for  more  beer. 
Whether  this  anecdote  be  true  or  not,  it  is  always 

162 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

told  as  showing  a  collapse  from  the  ideal  of  the 
Middle  Ages  to  the  level  of  the  present  day.  But 
in  the  mere  act  of  striking  for  beer  the  holy  man 
was  very  much  more  "  mediaeval  "  than  the  fool 
who  employed  him. 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  better  example  of 
this  than  Dickens's  great  defence  of  Christmas. 
In  fighting  for  Christmas  he  was  fighting  for  the 
old  European  festival,  Pagan  and  Christian,  for 
that  trinity  of  eating,  drinking  and  praying  which 
to  moderns  appears  irreverent,  for  the  holy  day 
which  is  really  a  holiday.  He  had  himself  the 
most  babyish  Ideas  about  the  past.  He  supposed 
the  Middle  Ages  to  have  consisted  of  tournaments 
and  torture-chambers,  he  supposed  himself  to  be  a 
brisk  man  of  the  manufacturing  age,  almost  a  Util- 
itarian. But  for  all  that  he  defended  the  mediaeval 
feast  which  was  going  out  against  the  Utilitarian- 
ism which  was  coming  in.  He  could  only  see  all 
that  was  bad  In  medlaevallsm.  But  he  fought  for 
all  that  was  good  In  it.  And  he  was  all  the  more 
really  In  sympathy  with  the  old  strength  and  sim- 
plicity because  he  only  knew  that  It  was  good  and 
did  not  know  that  It  was  old.  He  cared  as  little 
for  medlaevallsm  as  the  mediaevals  did.  He  cared 
as  much  as  they  did  for  lustiness  and  virile  laughter 
and  sad  tales  of  good  lovers  and  pleasant  tales  of 

1^3 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

good  livers.  He  would  have  been  very  much 
bored  by  Ruskin  and  Walter  Pater  if  they  had 
explained  to  him  the  strange  sunset  tints  of  Lippi 
and  Botticelli.  He  had  no  pleasure  in  looking  on 
the  dying  Middle  Ages.  But  he  looked  on  the 
living  Middle  Ages,  on  a  piece  of  the  old  uproari- 
ous superstition  still  unbroken;  and  he  hailed  it 
like  a  new  religion.  The  Dickens  character  ate 
pudding  to  an  extent  at  which  the  modern  mediae- 
valists  turned  pale.  They  would  do  every  kind  of 
honour  to  an  old  observance,  except  observing  it. 
They  would  pay  to  a  Church  feast  every  sort  of 
compliment  except  feasting. 

And  (as  I  have  said)  as  were  his  unconscious 
relations  to  our  European  past,  so  were  his  uncon- 
scious relations  to  England.  He  Imagined  himself 
to  be,  if  anything,  a  sort  of  cosmopolitan;  at  any 
rate  to  be  a  champion  of  the  charms  and  merits  of 
continental  lands  against  the  arrogance  of  our 
island.  But  he  was  in  truth  very  much  more  a 
champion  of  the  old  and  genuine  England  against 
that  comparatively  cosmopolitan  England  which 
we  have  all  lived  to  see.  And  here  again  the 
supreme  example  Is  Christmas.  Christmas  Is,  as  I 
have  said,  one  of  numberless  old  European  feasts 
of  which  the  essence  Is  the  combination  of  religion 
with  merry-making.    But  among  those  feasts  It  is 

164 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

also  especially  and  distinctively  English  in  the 
style  of  its  merry-making  and  even  in  the  style  of 
its  religion.  For  the  character  of  Christmas  (as 
distinct,  for  instance,  from  the  continental  Easter) 
lies  chiefly  in  two  things:  first  on  the  terrestrial 
side  the  note  of  comfort  rather  than  the  note  of 
brightness;  and  on  the  spiritual  side,  Christian 
charity  rather  than  Christian  ecstasy.  And  com- 
fort is,  like  charity,  a  very  English  instinct.  Nay, 
comfort  is,  like  charity,  an  English  merit;  though 
our  comfort  may  and  does  degenerate  into  ma- 
terialism, just  as  our  charity  may  (and  does)  de- 
generate into  laxity  and  make-believe. 

This  ideal  of  comfort  belongs  peculiarly  to  Eng- 
land; it  belongs  peculiarly  to  Christmas;  above 
all  it  belongs  pre-eminently  to  Dickens.  And  it  is 
astonishingly  misunderstood.  It  is  misunderstood 
by  the  continent  of  Europe,  it  Is,  If  possible,  still 
more  misunderstood  by  the  English  of  to-day.  On 
the  Continent  the  restaurateurs  provide  us  with 
raw  beef,  as  If  we  were  savages;  yet  old  English 
cooking  takes  as  much  care  as  French.  And  In 
England  has  arisen  a  parvenu  patriotism  which 
represents  the  English  as  everything  but  English; 
as  a  blend  of  Chinese  stoicism,  Latin  militarism, 
Prussian  rigidity,  and  American  bad  taste.  And 
so  England,  whose  fault  is  gentility  and  whose 

165 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

virtue  Is  geniality,  England  with  her  tradition  of 
the  great  gay  gentlemen  of  Elizabeth,  Is  repre- 
sented to  the  four  quarters  of  the  world  (as  In 
Mr.  Kipling's  religious  poems)  In  the  enormous 
Image  of  a  solemn  cad.  And  because  It  Is  very 
difficult  to  be  comfortable  in  the  suburbs,  the 
suburbs  have  voted  that  comfort  Is  a  gross  and 
material  thing.  Comfort,  especially  this  vision  of 
Christmas  comfort,  Is  the  reverse  of  a  gross  or 
material  thing.  It  Is  far  more  poetical,  properly 
speaking,  than  the  Garden  of  Epicurus.  It  Is  far 
more  artistic  than  the  Palace  of  Art.  It  is  more 
artistic  because  It  Is  based  upon  a  contrast,  a  con- 
trast between  the  fire  and  wine  within  the  house 
and  the  winter  and  the  roaring  rains  without.  It 
is  far  more  poetical,  because  there  is  in  it  a  note 
of  defence,  almost  of  war;  a  note  of  being  be- 
sieged by  the  snow  and  hail;  of  making  merry 
in  the  belly  of  a  fort.  The  man  who  said  that 
an  Englishman's  house  is  his  castle  said  much  more 
than  he  meant.  The  Englishman  thinks  of  his 
house  as  something  fortified,  and  provisioned,  and 
his  very  surliness  is  at  root  romantic.  And  this 
sense  would  naturally  be  strongest  in  wild  winter 
nights,  when  the  lowered  portcullis  and  the  lifted 
drawbridge  do  not  merely  bar  people  out,  but  bar 
people  in.    The  Englishman's  house  is  most  sacred, 

i66 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

not  merely  when  the  King  cannot  enter  It,  but 
when  the  Englishman  cannot  get  out  of  it. 

This  comfort,  then,  is  an  abstract  thing,  a  prin- 
ciple. The  English  poor  shut  all  their  doors  and 
windows  till  their  rooms  reek  like  the  Black  Hole. 
They  are  suffering  for  an  idea.  Mere  animal 
hedonism  would  not  dream,  as  we  English  do,  of 
winter  feasts  and  little  rooms,  but  of  eating  fruit 
In  large  and  Idle  gardens.  Mere  sensuality  would 
desire  to  please  all  Its  senses.  But  to  our  good 
dreams  this  dark  and  dangerous  background  Is 
essential ;  the  highest  pleasure  we  can  Imagine  Is  a 
defiant  pleasure,  a  happiness  that  stands  at  bay. 
The  word  *'  comfort "  Is  not  Indeed  the  right 
word.  It  conveys  too  much  of  the  slander  of  mere 
sense;  the  true  word  Is  "cosiness,"  a  word  not 
translatable.  One,  at  least,  of  the  essentials  of 
It  IS  smallness,  smallness  in  preference  to  large- 
ness, smallness  for  smallness's  sake.  The  merry- 
maker wants  a  pleasant  parlour,  he  would  not  give 
twopence  for  a  pleasant  continent.  In  our  difficult 
time,  of  course,  a  fight  for  mere  space  has  become 
necessary.  Instead  of  being  greedy  for  ale  and 
Christmas  pudding  we  are  greedy  for  mere  air, 
an  equally  sensual  appetite.  In  abnormal  condi- 
tions this  is  wise;  and  the  illimitable  veldt  Is  an 
excellent  thing  for  nervous  people.  But  our  fathers 

167 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

were  large  and  healthy  enough  to  make  a  thing 
humane,  and  not  worry  about  whether  It  was  hy- 
gienic. They  were  big  enough  to  get  into  small 
rooms. 

Of  this  quite  deliberate  and  artistic  quality  in 
the  close  Christmas  chamber,  the  standing  evi- 
dence is  Dickens  in  Italy.  He  created  these  dim 
firelit  tales  like  little  dim  red  jewels,  as  an  artistic 
necessity,  in  the  centre  of  an  endless  summer. 
Amid  the  white  cities  of  Tuscany  he  hungered  for 
something  romantic,  and  wrote  about  a  rainy 
Christmas.  Amid  the  pictures  of  the  Uffizi  he 
starved  for  something  beautiful,  and  fed  his  mem- 
ory on  London  fog.  His  feeling  for  the  fog  was 
especially  poignant  and  typical.  In  the  first  of  his 
Christmas  tales,  the  popular  "  Christmas  Carol," 
he  suggested  the  very  soul  of  it  in  one  simile,  when 
he  spoke  of  the  dense  air,  suggesting  that  "  Nature 
)  I  was  brewing  on  a  large  scale."  This  sense  of  the 
thick  atmosphere  as  something  to  eat  or  drink, 
something  not  only  solid  but  satisfactory,  may 
seem  almost  insane,  but  it  is  no  exaggeration  of 
Dickens's  emotion.  We  speak  of  a  fog  "  that  you 
could  cut  with  a  knife."  Dickens  would  have  liked 
the  phrase  as  suggesting  that  the  fog  was  a  colos- 
sal cake.  He  liked  even  more  his  own  phrase  of 
the  Titanic  brewery,  and  no  dream  would  have 

i68 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

given  him  a  wilder  pleasure  than  to  grope  his  way 
to  some  such  tremendous  vats  and  drink  the  ale 
of  the  giants. 

There  Is  a  current  prejudice  against  fogs,  and 
Dickens,  perhaps.  Is  their  only  poet.  Considered 
hyglenlcally  no  doubt  this  may  be  more  or  less 
excusable.  But,  considered  poetically,  fog  Is  not 
undeserving,  It  has  a  real  significance.  We  have  in 
our  great  cities  abolished  the  clean  and  sane  dark- 
ness of  the  country.  We  have  outlawed  night  and 
sent  her  wandering  in  wild  meadows;  we  have  lit 
eternal  watch-fires  against  her  return.  We  have 
made  a  new  cosmos,  and  as  a  consequence  our  own 
sun  and  stars.  And,  as  a  consequence  also,  and 
most  justly,  we  have  made  our  own  darkness.  Just 
as  every  lamp  Is  a  warm  human  moon,  so  every 
fog  Is  a  rich  human  nightfall.  If  It  were  not  for 
this  mystic  accident  we  should  never  see  darkness, 
and  he  who  has  never  seen  darkness  has  never  seen 
the  sun.  Fog  for  us  Is  the  chief  form  of  that 
outward  pressure  which  compresses  mere  luxury 
into  real  comfort.  It  makes  the  world  small.  In 
the  same  spirit  as  in  that  common  and  happy  cry 
that  the  world  Is  small,  meaning  that  It  is  full  of 
friends.  The  first  man  that  emerges  out  of  the 
mist  with  a  light,  is  for  us  Prometheus,  a  saviour 
bringing  fire  to  men.    He  is  that  greatest  and  best 

169 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

of  all  men,  greater  than  the  heroes,  better  than 
the  saints,  Man  Friday.  Every  rumble  of  a  cart, 
every  cry  In  the  distance,  marks  the  heart  of  hu- 
manity beating  undaunted  In  the  darkness.  It  Is 
wholly  human;  man  tolling  In  his  own  cloud.  If 
real  darkness  Is  like  the  embrace  of  God,  this  is 
the  dark  embrace  of  man. 

In  such  a  sacred  cloud  the  tale  called  "  The 
Christmas  Carol "  begins,  the  first  and  most  typl- 
cal  of  all  his  Christmas  tales.  It  Is  not  Irrelevant 
to  dilate  upon  the  geniality  of  this  darkness,  be- 
cause It  Is  characteristic  of  Dickens  that  his  at- 
mospheres are  more  Important  than  his  stories. 
The  Christmas  atmosphere  is  more  Important  than 
Scrooge,  or  the  ghosts  either ;  in  a  sense,  the  back- 
ground Is  more  Important  than  the  figures.  The 
same  thing  may  be  noticed  In  his  dealings  with 
that  other  atmosphere  (besides  that  of  good  hu- 
mour) which  he  excelled  in  creating,  an  atmos- 
phere of  mystery  and  wrong,  such  as  that  which 
gathers  round  Mrs.  Clennam,  rigid  In  her  chair, 
or  old  Miss  Havisham,  Ironically  robed  as  a  bride. 
Here  again  the  atmosphere  altogether  eclipses  the 
story,  which  often  seems  disappointing  In  com- 
parison. The  secrecy  is  sensational;  the  secret 
is  tame.  The  surface  of  the  thing  seems  more 
awful  than  the  core  of  It.     It  seems  almost  as  If 

170 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

these  grisly  figures,  Mrs.  Chadband  and  Mrs. 
Clennam,  Miss  Havlsham  and  Miss  Fllte,  Nemo 
and  Sally  Brass,  were  keeping  something  back 
from  the  author  as  well  as  from  the  reader.  When 
the  book  closes  we  do  not  know  their  real  secret. 
They  soothed  the  optimistic  Dickens  with  some- 
thing less  terrible  than  the  truth.  The  dark  house 
of  Arthur  Clennam's  childhood  really  depresses 
us;  it  is  a  true  glimpse  Into  that  quiet  street  in 
hell,  where  live  the  children  of  that  unique  dis- 
pensation which  theologians  call  Calvinism  and 
Christians  devil-worship.  But  some  stranger  crime 
had  really  been  done  there,  some  more  monstrous 
blasphemy  or  human  sacrifice  than  the  suppression 
of  some  silly  document  advantageous  to  the  silly 
Dorrlts.  Something  worse  than  a  common  tale 
of  jilting  lay  behind  the  masquerade  and  madness 
of  the  awful  Miss  Havlsham.  Something  worse 
was  whispered  by  the  misshapen  Quilp  to  the  sin- 
ister Sally  in  that  wild,  wet  summer-house  by  the 
river,  something  worse  than  the  clumsy  plot 
against  the  clumsy  Kit.  These  dark  pictures  seem 
almost  as  if  they  were  literally  visions;  things, 
that  is,  that  Dickens  saw  but  did  not  understand. 

And  as  with  his  backgrounds  of  gloom,  so  with 
his  backgrounds  of  good-will,  in  such  tales  as 
"  The  Christmas  Carol."    The  tone  of  the  tale  is 

171 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

kept  throughout  in  a  happy  monotony,  though  the 
tale  Is  everywhere  Irregular  and  In  some  places 
weak.  It  has  the  same  kind  of  artistic  unity  that 
belongs  to  a  dream.  A  dream  may  begin  with  the 
end  of  the  world  and  end  with  a  tea-party;  but 
either  the  end  of  the  world  will  seem  as  trivial 
as  a  tea-party  or  that  tea-party  will  be  as  terrible 
as  the  day  of  doom.  The  incidents  change  wildly; 
the  story  scarcely  changes  at  all.  "  The  Christmas 
Carol  "  Is  a  kind  of  philanthropic  dream,  an  enjoy- 
able nightmare,  In  which  the  scenes  shift  bewilder- 
ingly  and  seem  as  miscellaneous  as  the  pictures  In 
a  scrap-book,  but  In  which  there  is  one  constant 
state  of  the  soul,  a  state  of  rowdy  benediction  and 
a  hunger  for  human  faces.  The  beginning  Is  about 
a  winter  day  and  a  miser;  yet  the  beginning  Is  In 
no  way  bleak.  The  author  starts  with  a  kind  of 
happy  howl ;  he  bangs  on  our  door  like  a  drunken 
carol  singer;  his  style  Is  festive  and  popular;  he 
compares  the  snow  and  hail  to  philanthropists  who 
"  come  down  handsomely  ";  he  compares  the  fog 
to  unlimited  beer.  Scrooge  Is  not  really  Inhuman 
at  the  beginning  any  more  than  he  is  at  the  end. 
There  Is  a  heartiness  in  his  Inhospitable  sentiments 
that  Is  akin  to  humour  and  therefore  to  humanity; 
he  Is  only  a  crusty  old  bachelor,  and  had  (I 
strongly  suspect)   given  away  turkeys  secretly  all 

172 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

his  life.  The  beauty  and  the  real  blessing  of  the 
story  do  not  He  In  the  mechanical  plot  of  It,  the 
repentance  of  Scrooge,  probable  or  Improbable; 
they  He  In  the  great  furnace  of  real  happiness  that 
glows  through  Scrooge  and  everything  round  him ; 
that  great  furnace,  the  heart  of  Dickens.  Whether 
the  Christmas  visions  would  or  would  not  convert 
Scrooge,  they  convert  us.  Whether  or  no  the 
visions  were  evoked  by  real  Spirits  of  the  Past, 
Present,  and  Future,  they  were  evoked  by  that 
truly  exalted  order  of  angels  who  are  correctly 
called  High  Spirits.  They  are  impelled  and  sus- 
tained by  a  quality  which  our  contemporary  artists 
ignore  or  almost  deny,  but  which  In  a  life  decently 
lived  Is  as  normal  and  attainable  as  sleep,  positive, 
passionate,  conscious  joy.  The  story  sings  from  end 
to  end  like  a  happy  man  going  home;  and,  like  a 
happy  and  good  man,  when  it  cannot  sing  it  yells. 
It  is  lyric  and  exclamatory,  from  the  first  exclama- 
tory words  of  it.  It  Is  strictly  a  Christmas  Carol. 
Dickens,  as  has  been  said,  went  to  Italy  with 
this  kindly  cloud  still  about  him,  still  meditating 
on  Yule  mysteries.  Among  the  olives  and  the 
orange-trees  he  wrote  his  second  great  Christmas 
tale,  "The  Chimes''  (at  Genoa  in  1844),  a 
Christmas  tale  only  differing  from  "  The  Christ- 
mas Carol  "  in  being  fuller  of  the  grey  rains  of 

173 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

winter  and  the  north.  "  The  Chimes  '*  Is,  like  the 
"  Carol,"  an  appeal  for  charity  and  mirth,  but  it 
Is  a  stern  and  fighting  appeal:  if  the  other  is  a 
Christmas  carol,  this  Is  a  Christmas  war-song.  In 
It  Dickens  hurled  himself  with  even  more  than 
his  usual  militant  joy  and  scorn  Into  an  attack  upon 
a  cant,  which  he  said  made  his  blood  boll.  This 
cant  was  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  whole 
tone  taken  by  three-quarters  of  the  political  and 
economic  world  towards  the  poor.  It  was  a  vague 
and  vulgar  Benthamism  with  a  rollicking  Tory 
touch  In  It.  It  explained  to  the  poor  their  duties 
with  a  cold  and  coarse  philanthropy  unendurable 
by  any  free  man.  It  had  also  at  Its  command  a 
kind  of  brutal  banter,  a  loud  good-humour  which 
Dickens  sketches  savagely  in  Alderman  Cute.  He 
fell  furiously  on  all  their  ideas:  the  cheap  advice 
to  live  cheaply,  the  base  advice  to  live  basely, 
above  all,  the  preposterous  primary  assumption 
that  the  rich  are  to  advise  the  poor  and  not  the 
poor  the  rich.  There  were  and  are  hundreds  of 
these  benevolent  bullies.  Some  say  that  the  poor 
should  give  up  having  children,  which  means  that 
they  should  give  up  their  great  virtue  of  sexual 
sanity.  Some  say  that  they  should  give  up 
"  treating "  each  other,  which  means  that  they 
should  give  up  all  that  remains  to  them  of  the 

174 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

virtue  of  hospitality.  Against  all  of  this  Dickens 
thundered  very  thoroughly  in  "  The  Chimes."  It 
may  be  remarked  in  passing  that  this  affords  an- 
other instance  of  a  confusion  already  referred  to, 
the  confusion  whereby  Dickens  supposed  himself 
io  be  exalting  the  present  over  the  past,  whereas 
he  was  really  dealing  deadly  blows  at  things 
strictly  peculiar  to  the  present.  Embedded  In  this 
very  book  is  a  somewhat  useless  Interview  be- 
tween Trotty  Veck  and  the  church  bells,  In  which 
the  latter  lectures  the  former  for  having  supposed 
(why  I  don't  know)  that  they  were  expressing 
regret  for  the  disappearance  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
There  Is  no  reason  why  Trotty  Veck  or  any  one 
else  should  idealize  the  Middle  Ages,  but  certainly 
he  was  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  be  asked  to 
Idealize  the  nineteenth  century,  seeing  that  the 
smug  and  stingy  philosophy,  which  poisons  his  life 
through  the  book,  was  an  exclusive  creation  of  that 
century.  But,  as  I  have  said  before,  the  fieriest 
medlaevalist  may  forgive  Dickens  for  disliking  the 
good  things  the  Middle  Ages  took  away,  consider- 
ing how  he  loved  whatever  good  things  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  left  behind.  It  matters  very  little  that 
he  hated  old  feudal  castles  when  they  were  already 
old.  It  matters  very  much  that  he  hated  the  New 
Poor  Law  while  It  was  still  new. 

175 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

The  moral  of  this  matter  In  "  The  Chimes  "  Is 
essential.  Dickens  had  sympathy  with  the  poor 
in  the  Greek  and  literal  sense;  he  suffered  with 
them  mentally;  for  the  things  that  Irritated  them 
were  the  things  that  Irritated  him.  He  did  not 
pity  the  people,  or  even  champion  the  people,  or 
even  merely  love  the  people;  In  this  matter  he 
was  the  people.  He  alone  In  our  literature  Is  the 
voice  not  merely  of  the  social  substratum,  but  even 
of  the  subconsciousness  of  the  substratum.  He 
utters  the  secret  anger  of  the  humble.  He  says 
what  the  uneducated  only  think,  or  even  only  feel, 
about  the  educated.  And  In  nothing  is  he  so 
genuinely  such  a  voice  as  in  this  fact  of  his  fiercest 
mood  being  reserved  for  methods  that  are  counted 
scientific  and  progressive.  Pure  and  exalted  athe- 
ists talk  themselves  into  believing  that  the  work- 
ing-classes are  turning  with  indignant  scorn  from 
the  churches.  The  working-classes  are  not  indig- 
nant against  the  churches  in  the  least.  The  things 
the  working-classes  really  are  indignant  against 
are  the  hospitals.  The  people  has  no  definite  dis- 
belief in  the  temples  of  theology.  The  people  has 
a  very  fiery  and  practical  disbelief  in  the  temples 
of  physical  science.  The  things  the  poor  hate  are 
the  modern  things,  the  rationalistic  things — doc- 
tors-, inspectors,  poor  law  guardians,  professional 

176 


DICKENS    AND     CHRISTMAS 

philanthropy.  They  never  showed  any  reluctance 
to  be  helped  by  the  old  and  corrupt  monasteries. 
They  will  often  die  rather  than  be  helped  by  the 
modern  and  efficient  workhouse.  Of  all  this  anger, 
good  or  bad,  Dickens  is  the  voice  of  an  accusing 
energy.  When,  in  ''  The  Christmas  Carol," 
Scrooge  refers  to  the  surplus  population,  the  Spirit 
tells  him,  very  justly,  not  to  speak  till  he  knows 
what  the  surplus  is  and  where  it  is.  The  implica- 
tion is  severe  but  sound.  When  a  group  of  su- 
perciliously benevolent  economists  look  down  into 
the  abyss  for  the  surplus  population,  assuredly 
there  is  only  one  answer  that  should  be  given  to 
them;  and  that  is  to  say,  "If  there  is  a  surplus, 
you  are  a  surplus."  And  if  any  one  were  ever 
cut  off,  they  would  be.  If  the  barricades  went  up 
in  our  streets  and  the  poor  became  masters,  I  think 
the  priests  would  escape,  I  fear  the  gentlemen 
would;  but  I  believe  the  gutters  would  be  simply 
running  with  the  blood  of  philanthropists. 

Lastly,  he  was  at  one  with  the  poor  in  this 
chief  matter  of  Christmas,  in  the  matter,  that  is, 
of  special  festivity.  There  is  nothing  on  which 
the  poor  are  more  criticized  than  on  the  point  of 
spending  large  sums  on  small  feasts;  and  though 
there  are  material  difficulties,  there  is  nothing  in 
which  they  are  more  right.     It  is  said  that  a  Bos- 

177 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

ton  paradox-monger  said,  "  Give  us  the  luxuries  of 
life  and  we  will  dispense  with  the  necessities.'* 
But  it  is  the  whole  human  race  that  says  it,  from 
the  first  savage  wearing  feathers  instead  of  clothes 
to  the  last  costermonger  having  a  treat  instead  of 
three  meals. 

The  third  of  his  Christmas  stories,  ''  The 
Cricket  on  the  Hearth,"  calls  for  no  extensive  com- 
ment, though  it  is  very  characteristic.  It  has  all 
the  qualities  which  we  have  called  dominant  quali- 
ties in  his  Christmas  sentiment.  It  has  cosiness, 
that  is  the  comfort  that  depends  upon  a  discomfort 
surrounding  it.  It  has  a  sympathy  with  the  poor, 
and  especially  with  the  extravagance  of  the  poor; 
with  what  may  be  called  the  temporary  wealth  of 
the  poor.  It  has  the  sentiment  of  the  hearth,  that 
is,  the  sentiment  of  the  open  fire  being  the  red 
j  heart  of  the  room.  That  open  fire  is  the  veritable 
' '  flame  of  England,  still  kept  burning  in  the  midst 
of  a  mean  civilization  of  stoves.  But  everything 
that  is  valuable  in  "  The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth  " 
Is  perhaps  as  well  expressed  in  the  title  as  It  Is  In 
the  story.  The  tale  Itself,  In  spite  of  some  of  those 
Inimitable  things  that  Dickens  never  failed  to  say, 
Is  a  little  too  comfortable  to  be  quite  convincing. 
"  The  Christmas  Carol  "  Is  the  conversion  of  an 
anti-Christmas   character.     "  The   Chimes "   is   a 

178 


DICKENS    AND    CHRISTMAS 

slaughter  of  anti-Christmas  characters.  *'  The 
Cricket,"  perhaps,  fails  for  lack  of  this  crusading 
note.  For  everything  has  its  weak  side,  and  when 
full  justice  has  been  done  to  this  neglected  note  of 
poetic  comfort,  we  must  remember  that  it  has  its 
very  real  weak  side.  The  defect  of  it  in  the  work 
of  Dickens  was  that  he  tended  sometimes  to  pile 
up  the  cushions  until  none  of  the  characters  could 
move.  He  is  so  much  interested  in  effecting  his 
state  of  static  happiness  that  he  forgets  to  make 
a  story  at  all.  His  princes  at  the  start  of  the 
story  begin  to  live  happily  ever  afterwards.  We 
feel  this  strongly  in  "  Master  Humphrey's  Clock," 
and  we  feel  it  sometimes  in  these  Christmas  stories. 
He  makes  his  characters  so  comfortable  that  his 
characters  begin  to  dream  and  drivel.  And  he 
makes  his  reader  so  comfortable  that  his  reader 
goes  to  sleep. 

The  actual  tale  of  the  carrier  and  his  wife 
sounds  somewhat  sleepily  in  our  ears;  we  cannot 
keep  our  attention  fixed  on  it,  though  we  are  con- 
scious of  a  kind  of  warmth  from  it  as  from  a  great 
wood  fire.  We  know  so  well  that  everything  will 
soon  be  all  right  that  we  do  not  suspect  when 
the  carrier  suspects,  and  are  not  frightened  when 
the  gruff  Tackleton  growls.  The  sound  of  the 
Christmas  festivities  at  the  end  comes  fainter  on 

179 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

our  ears  than  did  the  shout  of  the  Cratchlts  or  the 
bells  of  Trotty  Veck.  All  the  good  figures  that 
followed  Scrooge  when  he  came  growling  out  of 
the  fog  fade  into  the  fog  again. 


i8o 


CHAPTER    VIII 
THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

Dickens  was  back  in  London  by  the  June  of 
1845.  About  this  time  he  became  the  first  editor 
of  The  Daily  News,  cL  paper  which  he  had  largely 
planned  and  suggested,  and  which,  I  trust,  re- 
members its  semi-divine  origin.  That  his  thoughts 
had  been  running,  as  suggested  in  the  last  chapter, 
somewhat  monotonously  on  his  Christmas  domes- 
ticities, is  again  suggested  by  the  rather  singular 
fact  that  he  originally  wished  The  Daily  News 
to  be  called  The  Cricket.  Probably  he  was 
haunted  again  with  his  old  vision  of  a  homely, 
tale-telling  periodical  such  as  had  broken  off  in 
"  Master  Humphrey's  Clock."  About  this  time, 
however,  he  was  peculiarly  unsettled.  Almost  as 
soon  as  he  had  taken  the  editorship  he  threw  it 
up;  and  having  only  recently  come  back  to  Eng- 
land, he  soon  made  up  his  mind  to  go  back  to  the 
Continent.  In  the  May  of  1846  he  ran  over  to 
Switzerland  and  tried  to  write  "  Dombey  and 
Son  "  at  Lausanne.  Tried  to,  I  say,  because  his 
letters  are  full  of  an  angry  impotence.     He  could 

181 


\ 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

not  get  on.  He  attributed  this  especially  to  his 
love  of  London  and  his  loss  of  It,  "  the  absence  of 
streets  and  numbers  of  figures.  .  .  .  My  figures 
seem  disposed  to  stagnate  without  crowds  about 
y  them."  But  he  also,  with  shrewdness,  attributed 
it  more  generally  to  the  laxer  and  more  wandering 
life  he  had  led  for  the  last  two  years,  the  American 
tour,  the  Italian  tour,  diversified,  generally  speak- 

X^  ing,  only  with  slight  literary  productions.  His 
ways  were  never  punctual  or  healthy,  but  they 
were  also  never  unconscientious  as  far  as  work 
was  concerned.  If  he  walked  all  night  he  could 
write  all  day.  But  In  this  strange  exile  or  inter- 
regnum he  did  not  seem  able  to  fall  Into  any  habits, 
even  bad  habits.  A  restlessness  beyond  all  his 
experience  had  fallen  for  a  season  upon  the  most 
restless  of  the  children  of  men. 

yf  It  may  be  a  mere  coincidence :  but  this  break  in 
his  life  very  nearly  coincided  with  the  Important 
break  in  his  art.  "  Dombey  and  Son,"  planned  in 
all  probability  some  time  before,  was  destined  to 
be  the  last  of  a  quite  definite  series,  the  early  novels 
of  Dickens.  The  difference  between  the  books 
I  from  the  beginning  up  to  "  Dombey,"  and  the 
books  from  "  David  Copperfield  "  to  the  end  may 
be  hard  to  state  dogmatically,  but  is  evident  to 

^^  every  one  with  any  literary  sense.  Very  coarsely, 
^^  182 


\ 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

the  case  may  be  put  by  saying  that  he  diminished, 
in  the  story  as  a  whole,  the  practice  of  pure  cari- 
cature. Still  more  coarsely  it  may  be  put  in  the  f 
phrase  that  he  began  to  practise  realism.  If  we 
take  Mr.  Stigglns,  say,  as  a  clergyman  depicted  at  ] 
the  beginning  of  his  literary  career,  and  Mr.  ^ 
Crisparkle,  say,  as  a  clergyman  depicted  at  the 
end  of  it,  it  Is  evident  that  the  difference  does  not 
merely  consist  In  the  fact  that  the  first  Is  a  less 
desirable  clergyman  than  the  second.  It  consists 
In  the  nature  of  our  desire  for  either  of  them. 
The  glory  of  Mr.  Crisparkle  partly  consists  In  the 
fact  that  he  might  really  exist  anywhere,  in  any 
country  town  into  which  we  may  happen  to  stray. 
The  glory  of  Mr.  Stigglns  wholly  consists  in  the 
fact  that  he  could  not  possibly  exist  anywhere  ex- 
cept in  the  head  of  Dickens.  Dickens  has  the 
secret  recipe  of  that  divine  dish.  In  some  sense, 
therefore,  when  we  say  that  he  became  less  of  a 
caricaturist  we  mean  that  he  became  less  of  a 
creator.  That  original  violent  vision  of  all  things 
which  he  had  seen  from  his  boyhood  began  to  be 
mixed  with  other  men's  milder  visions  and  with 
the  light  of  common  day.  He  began  to  under- 
stand and  practise  other  than  his  own  mad  merits ; 
began  to  have  some  movement  towards  the  merits 
of  other  writers,  towards  the  mixed  emotion  of 

183 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

Thackeray,  or  the  solidity  of  George  Eliot.  And 
this  must  be  said  for  the  process;  that  the  fierce 
wine  of  Dickens  could  endure  some  dilution.  On 
the  whole,  perhaps,  his  primal  personalism  was  all 
the  better  when  surging  against  some  saner  re- 
straints. Perhaps  a  flavour  of  strong  Stigglns 
goes  a  long  way.  Perhaps  the  colossal  Crummies 
might  be  cut  down  into  six  or  seven  quite  credible 
characters.  For  my  own  part,  for  reasons  which 
I  shall  afterwards  mention,  I  am  In  real  doubt 
about  the  advantage  of  this  realistic  education  of 
Dickens.  I  am  not  sure  that  It  made  his  books 
better;  but  I  am  sure  It  made  them  less  bad.  He 
made  fewer  mistakes  undoubtedly;  he  succeeded 
In  eliminating  much  of  the  mere  rant  or  cant  of 
his  first  books;  he  threw  away  much  of  the  old 
padding,  all  the  more  annoying,  perhaps,  in  a 
literary  sense,  because  he  did  not  mean  It  for  pad- 
ding, but  for  essential  eloquence.  But  he  did  not 
produce  anything  actually  better  than  Mr.  Chuck- 
ster.  But  then  there  Is  nothing  better  than  Mr. 
Chuckster.  Certain  works  of  art,  such  as  the 
Venus  of  MIlo,  exhaust  our  aspiration.  Upon  the 
whole  this  may,  perhaps,  be  safely  said  of  the 
transition.  Those  who  have  any  doubt  about 
Dickens  can  have  no  doubt  of  the  superiority  of 
the  later  books.     Beyond  question  they  have  less 

184 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

of  what  annoys  us  In  Dickens.  But  do  not,  If 
you  are  in  the  company  of  any  ardent  adorers  of 
Dickens  (as  I  hope  for  your  sake  you  are)  do 
not  Insist  too  urgently  and  exclusively  on  the  splen- 
dour of  Dickens's  last  works,  or  they  will  discover 
that  you  do  not  like  him. 

"  Dombey  and  Son  "  Is  the  last  novel  In  the  first 
manner:  "David  Copperfield  "  Is  the  first  novel  s^^ 
In  the  last.  The  Increase  In  care  and  realism  In 
the  second  of  the  two  Is  almost  startling.  Yet 
even  In  "  Dombey  and  Son  "  we  can  see  the  coming 
of  a  change,  however  faint,  If  we  compare  It  with 
his  first  fantasies,  such  as  "  Nicholas  NIckleby  " 
or  "  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop."  The  central  story  |\ 
Is  still  melodrama,  but  It  Is  much  more  tactful  and 
effective  melodrama.  Melodrama  Is  a  form  of 
art,  legitimate  like  any  other,  as  noble  as  farce, 
almost  as  noble  as  pantomime.  The  essence  of 
melodrama  Is  that  It  appeals  to  the  moral  sense 
In  a  highly  simplified  state,  just  as  farce  appeals 
to  the  sense  of  humour  In  a  highly  simplified  state. 
Farce  creates  people  who  are  so  Intellectually  sim- 
ple as  to  hide  In  packing-cases  or  pretend  to  be 
their  own  aunts.  Melodrama  creates  people  so 
morally  simple  as  to  kill  their  enemies  In  Oxford 
Street,  and  repent  on  seeing  their  mother's  photo- 
graph.    The  object  of  the  simplification  In  farce 

185 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

and  melodrama  Is  the  same,  and  quite  artistically 
legitimate,  the  object  of  gaining  a  resounding  ra- 
pidity of  action  which  subtleties  would  obstruct. 
And  this  can  be  done  wxll  or  ill.  The  simplified 
villain  can  be  a  spirited  charcoal  sketch  or  a  mere 
black  smudge.  Carker  is  a  spirited  charcoal 
sketch:  Ralph  NIckleby  Is  a  mere  black  smudge. 
The  tragedy  of  Edith  Dombey  teems  with  unlikeli- 
hood, but  It  teems  with  life.  That  Dombey  should 
give  his  own  wife  censure  through  his  own  busi- 
ness manager  Is  Impossible,  I  will  not  say  In  a 
gentleman,  but  In  a  person  of  ordinary  sane  self- 
conceit.  But  once  having  got  the  inconceivable 
trio  before  the  footlights,  Dickens  gives  us  good 
ringing  dialogue,  very  different  from  the  mere 
rants  In  which  Ralph  NIckleby  figures  In  the  un- 
imaginable character  of  a  rhetorical  money-lender. 
And  there  Is  another  point  of  technical  Improve- 
ment In  this  book  over  such  books  as  "  Nicholas 
NIckleby."  It  has  not  only  a  basic  Idea,  but  a 
good  basic  Idea.  There  is  a  real  artistic  oppor- 
tunity In  the  conception  of  a  solemn  and  selfish 
man  of  affairs,  feeling  for  his  male  heir  his  first 
and  last  emotion,  mingled  of  a  thin  flame  of  ten- 
derness and  a  strong  flame  of  pride.  But  with  all 
these  possibilities,  the  serious  episode  of  the  Dom- 
beys  serves  ultimately  only  to  show  how  unfitted 

i86 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

Dickens  was  for  such  things,  how  fitted  he  was  for 
something  opposite. 

The  incurable  poetic  character,  the  hopelessly 
non-reallstic  character  of  Dickens's  essential  genius 
could  not  have  a  better  example  than  the  story  of 
the  Dombeys.  For  the  story  itself  is  probable; 
it  is  the  treatment  that  makes  it  unreal.  In  at- 
tempting to  paint  the  dark  pagan  devotion  of  the 
father  (as  distinct  from  the  ecstatic  and  Christian 
devotion  of  the  mother),  Dickens  was  painting 
something  that  was  really  there.  This  Is  no  wild 
theme,  like  the  wanderings  of  Nell's  grandfather, 
or  the  marriage  of  Gride.  A  man  of  Dombey's 
type  would  love  his  son  as  he  loves  Paul.  He 
would  neglect  his  daughter  as  he  neglects  Flor- 
ence. And  yet  we  feel  the  utter  unreality  of  it 
all,  while  we  feel  the  utter  reality  of  monsters 
like  Stigglns  or  Mantallni.  Dickens  could  only 
work  In  his  own  way,  and  that  way  was  the  wild 
way.  We  may  almost  say  this :  that  he  could  only 
make  his  characters  probable  If  he  was  allowed  to 
make  them  Impossible.  Give  him  license  to  say 
and  do  anything,  and  he  could  create  beings  as 
vivid  as  our  own  aunts  and  uncles.  Keep  him  to 
likelihood  and  he  could  not  tell  the  plainest  tale 
so  as  to  make  It  seem  likely.  The  story  of  *'  Pick- 
wick "  is  credible,  although  It  is  not  possible.    The 

187 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

story  of  Florence  Dombey  is  Incredible  although 
It  Is  true. 

An  excellent  example  can  be  found  in  the  same 
story.  Major  Bagstock  Is  a  grotesque,  and  yet  he 
contains  touch  after  touch  of  Dickens's  quiet  and 
sane  observation  of  things  as  they  are.  He  was 
always  most  accurate  when  he  was  most  fantastic. 
Dombey  and  Florence  are  perfectly  reasonable, 
but  we  simply  know  that  they  do  not  exist.  The 
Major  Is  mountainously  exaggerated,  but  we  all 
feel  that  we  have  met  him  at  Brighton.  Nor  is 
the  rationale  of  the  paradox  difficult  to  see ;  Dick- 
ens exaggerated  when  he  had  found  a  real  truth 
to  exaggerate.  It  is  a  deadly  error  (an  error  at 
the  back  of  much  of  the  false  placidity  of  our 
politics)  to  suppose  that  lies  are  told  with  excess 
and  luxuriance,  and  truths  told  with  modesty  and 
restraint.  Some  of  the  most  frantic  lies  on  the 
face  of  life  are  told  with  modesty  and  restraint; 
for  the  simple  reason  that  only  modesty  and  re- 
straint will  save  them.  Many  official  declarations 
are  just  as  dignified  as  Mr.  Dombey,  because  they 
are  just  as  fictitious.  On  the  other  hand,  the  man 
who  has  found  a  truth  dances  about  like  a  boy 
who  has  found  a  shilling;  he  breaks  Into  extrava- 
gances, as  the  Christian  churches  broke  Into  gar- 
goyles.    In  one  sense  truth  alone  can  be  exag- 

i88 


y^xff 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

gerated;  nothing  else  can  stand  the  strain.  The 
outrageous  Bagstock  Is  a  glowing  and  glaring  ex- 
aggeration of  a  thing  we  have  all  seen  In  life — 
the  worst  and  most  dangerous  of  all  Its  hypocrisies. 
For  the  worst  and  most  dangerous  hypocrite  is 
not  he  who  effects  unpopular  virtue,  but  he  who 

ects  popular  vice.  The  jolly  fellow  of  the  sa- 
loon bar  and  the  racecourse  Is  the  real  deceiver 
of  mankind;  he  has  misled  more  than  any  false 
prophet,  and  his  victims  cry  to  him  out  of  hell. 
The  excellence  of  the  Bagstock  conception  can  best 
be  seen  If  we  compare  it  with  the  much  weaker 
and  more  improbable  knavery  of  Pecksniff.  It 
would  not  be  worth  a  man's  while,  with  any 
worldly  object,  to  pretend  to  be  a  holy  and  high- 
minded  architect.  The  world  does  not  admire 
holy  and  high-minded  architects.  The  world  does 
admire  rough  and  tough  old  army  men  who  swear 
at  waiters  and  wink  at  women.  Major  Bagstock 
Is  simply  the  perfect  prophecy  of  that  decadent 
jingoism  which  corrupted  England  of  late  years. 
England  has  been  duped,  not  by  the  cant  of  good- 
ness, but  by  the  cant  of  l^adness.  It  has  been 
fascinated  by  a  quite  fictitious  cynicism,  and 
reached  that  last  and  strangest  of  all  impostures 
in  which  the  mask  is  as  repulsive  as  the  face. 

"  Dombey  and  Son  "  provides  us  with  yet  an- 

189 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

other  instance  of  this  general  fact  In  Dickens. 
He  could  only  get  to  the  most  solemn  emotions 
adequately  If  he  got  to  them  through  the  grotesque. 
He  could  only,  so  to  speak,  really  get  Into  the  Inner 
chamber  by  coming  down  the  chimney,  like  his 
own  most  lovable  lunatic  In  "  Nicholas  Nickleby.** 
A  good  example  Is  such  a  character  as  Toots. 
Toots  Is  what  none  of  Dickens's  dignified  charac- 
ters are,  in  the  most  serious  sense,  a  true  lover. 
He  is  the  twin  of  Romeo.  He  has  passion,  hu- 
mility, self-knowledge,  a  mind  lifted  Into  all  mag- 
nanimous thoughts,  everything  that  goes  with  the 
best  kind  of  romantic  love.  His  excellence  in  the 
art  of  love  can  only  be  expressed  by  the  somewhat 
violent  expression  that  he  is  as  good  a  lover  as 
Walter  Gay  is  a  bad  one.  Florence  surely  de- 
served her  father's  scorn  if  she  could  prefer  Gay 
to  Toots.  It  is  neither  a  joke  nor  any  kind  of 
exaggeration  to  say  that  in  the  vacillations  of 
Toots,  Dickens  not  only  came  nearer  to  the 
psychology  of  true  love  than  he  ever  came  else- 
where, but  nearer  than  any  one  else  ever  came. 
To  ask  for  the  loved  one,  and  then  not  to  dare  to 
cross  the  threshold,  to  be  Invited  by  her,  to  long 
to  accept,  and  then  to  lie  in  order  to  decline,  these 
are  the  funny  things  that  Mr.  Toots  did,  and  that 
every  honest  man  who  yells  with  laughter  at  him 

190 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

has  done  also.  For  the  moment,  however,  I  only 
mention  this  matter  as  a  pendent  case  to  the  case 
of  Major  Bagstock,  an  example  of  the  way  in 
which  Dickens  had  to  be  ridiculous  in  order  to 
begin  to  be  true.  His  characters  that  begin  solemn  I 
end  futile;  his  characters  that  begin  frivolous  end 
solemn  in  the  best  sense.  His  foolish  figures  are 
not  only  more  entertaining  than  his  serious  figures, 
they  are  also  much  more  serious.  The  Marchion- 
ess Is  not  only  much  more  laughable  than  Little 
Nell ;  she  Is  also  much  more  of  all  that  Little  Nell 
was  meant  to  be;  much  piore  really  devoted,  pa- 
thetic, and  brave.  Dick  Swiveller  is  not  only  a 
much  funnier  fellow  than  Kit,  he  Is  also  a  much 
more  genuine  fellow,  being  free  from  that  slight 
stain  of  "  meekness,"  or  the  snobbishness  of  the 
respectable  poor,  which  the  wise  and  perfect 
Chuckster  wisely  and  perfectly  perceived  In  Kit. 
Susan  Nipper  Is  not  only  more  of  a  comic  charac- 
ter than  Florence;  she  Is  more  of  a  heroine  than 
Florence  any  day  of  the  week.  In  "  Our  Mutual 
Friend  "  we  do  not,  for  some  reason  or  other,  feel 
really  very  much  excited  about  the  fall  or  rescue 
of  Lizzie  Hexam.  She  seems  too  romantic  to  be 
really  pathetic.  But  we  do  feel  excited  about  the 
rescue  of  Miss  Lammle,  because  she  Is,  like  Toots, 
a  holy  fool;  because  her  pink  nose  and  pink  el- 

191 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

bows,  and  candid  outcry  and  open  indecent  affec- 
tions do  convey  to  us  a  sense  of  innocence  helpless 
among  human  dragons,  of  Andromeda  tied  naked 
to  a  rock.  Dickens  had  to  make  a  character  hu- 
morous before  he  could  make  it  human;  it  was  the 
only  way  he  knew,  and  he  ought  to  have  always 
adhered  to  it.  Whether  he  knew  It  or  not,  the 
only  two  really  touching  figures  in  "  Martin  Chuz- 
zlewlt  "  are  the  Misses  Pecksniff.  Of  the  things 
he  tried  to  treat  unsmilingly  and  grandly  we  can 
all  make  game  to  our  heart's  content.  But  when 
once  he  has  laughed  at  a  thing  It  Is  sacred  for  ever. 
"  Dombey,"  however,  means  first  and  foremost 
the  finale  of  the  early  Dickens.  It  Is  difiicult  to 
say  exactly  In  what  It  Is  that  we  perceive  that  the 
old  crudity  ends  there,  and  does  not  reappear  In 
''  David  Copperfield  "  or  In  any  of  the  novels  after 
It.  But  so  certainly  It  Is.  In  detached  scenes  and 
characters.  Indeed,  Dickens  kept  up  his  farcical  note 
almost  or  quite  to  the  end.  But  this  Is  the  last 
farce;  this  Is  the  last  work  In  which  a  farcical 
license  Is  tacitly  claimed,  a  farcical  note  struck  to 
start  with.  And  In  a  sense  his  next  novel  may  be 
called  his  first  novel.  But  the  growth  of  this  great 
novel,  "  David  Copperfield,"  is  a  thing  very  In- 
teresting, but  at  the  same  time  very  dark,  for  It  is 
a  growth  In  the  soul.     We  have  seen  that  Dlck- 

192 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

ens's  mind  was  In  a  stir  of  change;  that  he  was 
dreaming  of  art,  and  even  of  realism.  Hugely 
delighted  as  he  invariably  was  with  his  own  books, 
he  was  humble  enough  to  be  ambitious.  He  was 
even  humble  enough  to  be  envious.  In  the  matter 
of  art,  for  Instance,  in  the  narrower  sense,  of  ar- 
rangement and  proportion  In  fictitious  things,  he 
began  to  be  conscious  of  his  deficiency,  and  even, 
In  a  stormy  sort  of  way,  ashamed  of  it;  he  tried 
to  gain  completeness  even  while  raging  at  any  one 
who  called  him  incomplete.  And  In  this  matter  of 
artistic  construction,  his  ambition  (and  his  success 
too)  grew  steadily  up  to  the  Instant  of  his  death. 
The  end  finds  him  attempting  things  that  are  at 
the  opposite  pole  to  the  frank  formlessness  of 
"  Pickwick."  His  last  book,  *'  The  Mystery  of 
Edwin  Drood,'*  depends  entirely  upon  construc- 
tion, even  upon  a  centralized  strategy.  He  staked 
everything  upon  a  plot;  he  who  had  been  the 
weakest  of  plotters,  weaker  than  Sim  Tappertit. 
He  essayed  a  detective  story,  he  who  could  never 
keep  a  secret;  and  he  has  kept  It  to  this  day.  A 
new  Dickens  was  really  being  born  when  Dickens 
died. 

And  as  with  art,  so  with  reality.  He  wished  to 
show  that  he  could  construct  as  well  as  anybody. 
He  also  wished  to  show  that  he  could  be  as  ac- 

193 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

curate  as  anybody.  And  in  this  connection  (as 
in  many  others)  we  must  recur  constantly  to  the 
facts  mentioned  in  connection  with  America  and 
with  his  money-matters.  We  must  recur,  I  mean, 
to  the  central  fact  that  his  desires  were  extrava- 
gant in  quantity,  but  not  in  quality;  that  his  wishes 
were  excessive,  but  not  eccentric.  It  must  never  be 
forgotten  that  sanity  was  his  ideal,  even  when  he 
seemed  almost  insane.  It  was  thus  with  his  lite- 
rary aspirations.  He  was  brilliant;  but  he  wished 
sincerely  to  be  solid.  Nobody  out  of  an  asylum 
could  deny  that  he  was  a  genius  and  an  unique 
'writer;  but  he  did  not  wish  to  be  an  unique  writer, 
but  an  universal  writer.  Much  of  the  manufac- 
tured pathos  or  rhetoric  against  which  his  enemies 
quite  rightly  rail,  is  really  due  to  his  desire  to  give 
I  all  sides  of  life  at  once,  to  make  his  book  a  cosmos 
/  instead  of  a  tale.  He  was  sometimes  really  vulgar 
in  his  wish  to  be  a  literary  Whiteley,  an  universal 
provider.  Thus  it  was  that  he  felt  about  realism 
and  truth  to  life.  Nothing  is  easier  than  to  defend 
Dickens  as  Dickens,  but  Dickens  wished  to  be 
everybody  else.  Nothing  is  easier  than  to  defend 
Dickens's  world  as  a  fairyland,  of  which  he  alone 
has  the  key;  to  defend  him  as  one  defends  Maeter- 
linck, or  any  other  original  writer.  But  Dickens 
was  not  content  with  being  original,  he  had  a  wild 

194 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

wish  to  be  true.  He  loved  truth  so  much  In  the 
abstract  that  he  sacrificed  to  the  shadow  of  it  his 
own  glory.  He  denied  his  own  divine  originality, 
and  pretended  that  he  had  plagiarized  from  life. 
He  disowned  his  own  soul's  children,  and  said  he 
had  picked  them  up  In  the  street. 

And  In  this  mixed  and  heated  mood  of  anger 
and  ambition,  vanity  and  doubt,  a  new  and  great 
design  was  born.  He  loved  to  be  romantic,  yet  he 
desired  to  be  real.  How  if  he  wrote  of  a  thing 
that  was  real  and  showed  that  it  was  romantic? 
He  loved  real  life ;  but  he  also  loved  his  own  way. 
How  if  he  wrote  his  own  real  life,  but  wrote  it  In 
his  own  way?  How  If  he  showed  the  carping 
critics  who  doubted  the  existence  of  his  strange 
characters,  his  own  yet  stranger  existence?  How 
if  he  forced  these  pedants  and  unbelievers  to  admit 
that  Weller  and  Pecksniff,  Crummies  and  Swlvel- 
ler,  whom  they  thought  so  Improbably  wild  and 
wonderful,  were  less  wild  and  wonderful  than 
Charles  Dickens?  What  if  he  ended  the  quarrels 
about  whether  his  romances  could  occur,  by  con- 
fessing that  his  romance  had  occurred? 

For  some  time  past,  probably  during  the  greater 
part  of  his  life,  he  had  made  notes  for  an  auto- 
biography. I  have  already  quoted  an  admirable 
passage  from  these  notes,  a  passage  reproduced 

195 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

In  "  David  Copperfield,"  with  little  more  altera- 
tion'than  a  change  of  proper  names — the  passage 
which  describes  Captain  Porter  and  the  debtor's 
petition  in  the  Marshalsea.  But  he  probably  per- 
ceived at  last  what  a  less  keen  intelligence  must 
ultimately  have  perceived,  that  If  anjutobiog- 
raphy  Is  really  to  be  honest  It  must  be  turned  Into 

a  worIc~oT3ction. If  It  Is  reallj^ to  telTthe  truth, 

it  must  at  all  costs  profess  not  to.  No  man  dare 
say  of  himself,  over  his  own  name,  how  badly  he 
has  behaved.  No  man  dare  say  of  himself,  over 
his  own  name,  how  well  he  has  behaved.  More- 
over, of  course  a  touch  of  fiction  Is  almost  always 
essential  to  the  real  conveying  of  fact^  because 
fa^tj^s^exfierlencedr-iias-a-iragmentarines^-which 
is J3ewiiderlng_  at  firsL  hand  and  quite  blinding  at 
second  hand.  Facts  have  at  least  to  be  sorted  into 
compartments  and  the  proper  head  and  tail  given 
to  each.  The  perfection  and  polntedness  of  art 
are  a  sort  of  substitute  for  the  pungency  of  actual- 
ity. Without  this  selection  and  completion  our 
life  seems  a  tangle  of  unfinished  tales,  a  heap  of 
novels,  all  volume  one.  Dickens  determined  to 
make  one  complete  novel  of  It. 

For  though  there  are  many  other  aspects  of 
"  David  Copperfield,''  this  autobiographical  as- 
pect is,  after  all,  the  greatest.     The  point  of  the 

196 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

book  Is,  that  unlike  all  the  other  books  of  Dick- 
ens, it  is  concerned  with  quite  common  actualities, 
but  It  Is  concerned  with  them  warmly  and  with  the^' 
war-like  sympathies.  It  is  not  only  both  realistic 
and  romantic;  It  js  realistic  because  It  Is  romantic. 
It  Is  human  nature  described  with  the  human  ex- 
aggeration. We  all  know  the  actual  types  In  the 
book;  they  are  not  like  the  turgid  and  preternatu- 
ral types  elsewhere  In  Dickens.  They  are  not 
purely  poetic  creations  like  Mr.  Kenwiggs  or  Mr. 
Bunsby.  We  all  know  that  they  exist.  We  all 
know  the  stiff-necked  and  humorous  old-fashioned 
nurse,  so  conventional  and  yet  so  original,  so  de- 
pendent and  yet  so  Independent.  We  all  know  the 
intrusive  stepfather,  the  abstract  strange  male, 
coarse,  handsome,  sulky,  successful;  a  breaker-up 
of  homes.  We  all  know  the  erect  and  sardonic 
spinster,  the  spinster  who  Is  so  mad  in  small  things 
and  so  sane  In  great  ones.  We  all  know  the  cock 
of  the  school;  we  all  know  Steerforth,  the  creature 
whom  the  gods  love  and  even  the  servants  re- 
spect. We  know  his  poor  and  aristocratic  mother, 
so  proud,  so  gratified,  so  desolate.  We  know  the 
Rosa  Dartle  type,  the  lonely  woman  In  whom 
affection  itself  has  stagnated  Into  a  sort  of 
poison. 

But  while  these  are  real  characters  they  are 

197 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

i  rharacters  liL  yp_  with  the  colours  of  youth 
)assIon.  They  are  realj)eople  romantically 
that  Is  to  say,  they  are  real  people  felt  as 
real  people  feel  them.  They  are  exaggerated,  like 
all  Dickens's  figures :  but  they  are  not  exaggerated 
as  personalities  are  exaggerated  by  an  artist;  they 
are  exaggerated  as  persorialitips  Rre  exaggerated 
by  their  own  friends_and  enemies.  The  strong 
souls  are  seen  through  the  glorious  haze  of  the 
emotions  that  strong  ^ouls  really  create.  We  have 
Murdstone  as  he  would  be  to  a  boy  who  hated 
him;  and  rightly,  for  a  boy  would  hate  him.  We 
have  Steerforth  as  he  would  be  to  a  boy  who 
adored  him;  and  rightly,  for  a  boy  would  adore 
him.  It  may  be  that  if  these  persons  had  a  mere 
terrestrial  existence,  they  appeared  to  other  eyes 
more  insignificant.  It  may  be  that  Murdstone  in 
common  life  was  only  a  heavy  business  man  with 
a  human  side  that  David  was  too  sulky  to  find. 
It  may  be  that  Steerforth  was  only  an  Inch  or 
two  taller  than  David,  and  only  a  shade  or  two 
above  him  in  the  lower  middle  classes;  but  this 
does  not  make  the  book  less  true.  In  cataloguing 
th.^acts  of  lif e^  the^^authon  must  not  omit  that 
jnassive  fact.  Illusion. 

When  we-say-^e-book  is^ true  to  life  we  m.ust 
s^l2ulg.t£L-that--k-4&-€8pecIally  true  to  youth;  even 

198 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

to  boyhood.  All  the  characters  seem  a  little  larger 
than  they  really  were,  for  David  Is  looking  up  at 
them.  And  the  early  pages  of  the  book  are  in 
particular  astonishingly  vivid.  Parts  of  It  seem 
like  fragments  of  our  forgotten  Infancy.  The 
dark  house  of  childhood,  the  loneliness,  the  things 
half  understood,  the  nurse  with  her  Inscrutable 
sulks  and  her  more  Inscrutable  tenderness,  the  sud- 
den deportations  to  distant  places,  the  seaside  and 
Its  childish  friendships,  all  this  stirs  In  us  when 
we  read  It,  like  something  out  of  a  previous  exist- 
ence. Above  all,  Dickens  has  excellently  depicted 
the  child  enthroned  In  that  humble  circle  which 
only  In  after  years  he  perceives  to  have  been 
humble.  Modern  and  cultured  persons,  I  believe, 
object  to  their  children  seeing  kitchen  company  or 
being  taught  by  a  woman  like  Peggoty.  But 
surely  It  Is  more  Important  to  be  educated  In  a 
sense  of  human  dignity  and  equality  than  In  any- 
thing else  In  the  world.  And  a  child  who  has  once 
had  to  respect  a  kind  and  capable  woman  of  the 
lower  classes  will  respect  the  lower  classes  for 
ever.  The  true  way  to  overcome  the  evil  In  class 
distinctions  Is  not  to  denounce  them  as  revolution- 
ists denounce  them,  but  to  Ignore  them  as  children 
Ignore  them. 

The  early  youth  of  David  Copperfield  is  psy- 

199 


/ 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

chologically  almost  as  good  as  his  childhood.  In 
one  touch  especially  Dickens  pierced  the  very  core 
oTthe  sensibility:  oXbo.yhQDil;_il:_was  when  he  made 
David  more  afraid  of  a  manservant  than  of  any- 
body or  anything  else.  The  lowering  Murdstone, 
the  awful  Mrs.  Steerforth  are  not  so  alarming  to 
him  as  Mr.  Littimer,  the  unimpeachable  gentle- 
man's gentleman.  This  Is  exquisitely  true  to  the 
masculine  emotions,  especially  in  their  undevel- 
oped state.  A  youth  of  common  courage  does  not 
fear  anything  violent,  but  he  is  In  mortal  fear  of 
anything  correct.  This  may  or  may  not  be  the 
reason  that  so  few  female  writers  understand  their 
male  characters,  but  this  fact  remains:  that  the 
more  sincere  and  passionate  and  even  headlong  a 
lad  Is  the  more  certain  he  Is  to  be  conventional. 
The  bolder  and  freer  he  seems  the  more  the  tra- 
ditions of  the  college  or  the  rules  of  the  club  will 
hold  him  with  their  gyves  of  gossamer;  and  the 
less  afraid  he  Is  of  his  enemies  the  more  cravenly 
he  will  be  afraid  of  his  friends.  Herein  lies  Indeed 
the  darkest  peril  of  our  ethical  doubt  and  chaos. 
The  fear  Is  that  as  morals  become  less  urgent, 
manners  will  become  more  so;  and  men  who  have 
forgotten  the  fear  of  God  will  retain  the  fear  of 
Littimer.  We  shall  merely  sink  into  a  much 
meaner  bondage.     For  when  you  break  the  great 

200 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

laws,  you  do  not  get  liberty;  you  do  not  even  get 
anarchy.     You  get  the  small  laws. 

The  sting  and  strength  of  this  piece  of  fiction, 
then,  do  (by  a  rare  accident)  lie  in  the  circum- 
stance that  it  was  so  largely  founded  on  fact. 
"  David  Copperfield  "  is  the  great  answer  of  a 
great  romancer  to  the  realists.  David  says  in 
effect:  "What!  you  say  that  the  Dickens  tales 
are  too  purple  really  to  have  happened!  Why, 
this  is  what  happened  to  me,  and  it  seemed  the 
most  purple  of  all.  You  say  that  the  Dickens 
heroes  are  too  handsome  and  triumphant!  Why, 
no  prince  or  paladin  in  Ariosto  was  ever  so  hand- 
some and  triumphant  as  the  Head  Boy  seemed  to 
me  walking  before  me  in  the  sun.  You  say  the 
Dickens  villains  are  too  black!  Why,  there  was 
no  ink  in  the  devil's  ink-stand  black  enough  for 
my  own  stepfather  when  I  had  to  live  in  the  same 
house  with  him.  The  facts  are  quite  the  other 
way  tc  what  you  suppose.  This  life  of  grey 
studies  and  half  tones,  the  absence  of  which  you 
regret  in  Dickens,  is  only  life  as  it  is  looked  at. 
This  life  of  heroes  and  villains  is  life  as  it  is  lived. 
The  life  a  man  knows  best  is  exactly  the  life  he 
finds  most  full  of  fierce  certainties  and  battles  be- 
tween good  and  ill — his  own.  Oh,  yes,  the  life 
we  do  not  care  about  may  easily  be  a  psychological 

20I 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

comedy.  Other  people's  lives  may  easily  be  hu- 
man documents.  But  a  man's  own  life  is  always 
a  melodrama." 

There  are  other  effective  things  In  "  David 
Copperfield;  "  they  are  not  all  autobiographical, 
but  they  nearly  all  have  this  new  note  of  quietude 
and  reality.  Micawber_Is_gIg3Jitic;_aji_  immense 
assertioru-oi-the-trufh  that  the  way  to  live  is  to 
exaggerate  everything.  But  of  him  I  shall  have  to 
speak  more  fully  In  another  connection.  JVIrs* 
Micawber,  artistically  speaking,  Is  even  better. 
She  is  very  nearly  the  best  thing  in  Dlckensm^oth- 
Ing  ^^iii3^Jie-J3iQre_j^bsuMr  and  at  the^same  time 
rnore_true,  than  her  clear,  argumentative  manner 
of  speech  as  she  sits  smiling  and  expounding  In  the 
midstDf  ruin.  What  could  be  more  lucid  and  logi- 
cal and  unanswerable  than  her  statement  of  the 
prolegomena  of  the  Medway  problem,  of  which 
the  first  step  must  be  to  "  see  the  Medway,"  or 
of  the  coal-trade,  which  required  talent  and  capital. 
''  Talent  Mr.  Micawber  has.  Capital  Mr.  Mi- 
cawber has  not."  It  seems  as  If  something  should 
have  come  at  last  out  of  so  clear  and  scientific  an 
arrangement  of  Ideas.  Indeed  If  (as  has  been 
^suggested)  we  regard  "  David  Copperlield  "  as 
an  unconsirinns  d^f€flcfi.j:)f  th£.  poetic  view  of  life, 
we  might  regard  Mrs.  Micawber  aTanunconscIous 

202 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

satire  on  the  logical  view  of  life.  She  sits  as  a 
monument  of  the  hopelessness  and  helplessness  of 
reason  In  the  face  of  this  romantic  and  unreason- 
able world. 

As  I  have  taken  "  Dombey  and  Son  "  as  the 
book  before  the  transition,  and  "  David  Copper- 
field  "  as  typical  of  the  transition  Itself,  I  may 
perhaps  take  ''  Bleak  House  "  as  the  book  after 
the  transition.  ''  Bleak  House  "  has  every  char- 
acteristic of  his  new  realistic  culture.  Dickens  / 
never,  as  in  his  early  books,  revels  now  in  the 
parts  he  likes  and  scamps  the  parts  he  does  not, 
after  the  manner  of  Scott.  He  does  not,  as  in 
previous  tales,  leave  his  heroes  and  heroines  mere 
walking  gentlemen  and  ladles  with  nothing  at  all 
to  do  but  walk:  he  expends  upon  them  at  least 
Ingenuity.  By  the  expedients  (successful  or  not) 
of  the  self-revelation  of  Esther  or  the  humorous 
inconsistencies  of  Rick,  he  makes  his  younger  fig- 
ures if  not  lovable  at  least  readable.  Everywhere 
we  see  this  tighter  and  more  careful  grip.  He 
does  not,  for  Instance,  when  he  wishes  to  denounce 
a  dark  Institution,  sandwich  It  In  as  a  mere  episode 
In  a  rambling  story  of  adventure,  as  the  debtor's 
prison  Is  embedded  in  the  body  of  Pickwick  or  the 
low  Yorkshire  school  in  the  body  of  Nicholas 
NIckleby.    He  puts  the  Court  of  Chancery  in  the 

203 


/ 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

centre  of  the  stage,  a  sombre  and  sinister  temple, 
and  groups  round  it  in  artistic  relation  decaying 
and  fantastic  figures,  Its  offspring  and  its  satirists. 
An  old  dipsomaniac  keeps  a  rag  and  bone  shop, 
type  of  futility  and  antiquity,  and  calls  himself 
the  Lord  Chancellor.  A  little  mad  old  maid  hangs 
about  the  courts  on  a  forgotten  or  imaginary  law- 
suit, and  says  with  perfect  and  pungent  irony, 
"  I  am  expecting  a  judgment  shortly,  on  the  Day 
of  Judgment.'*  Rick  and  Ada  and  Esther  are  not 
mere  strollers  who  have  strayed  Into  the  court  of 
law,  they  are  its  children.  Its  symbols,  and  Its  vic- 
tims. The  righteous  indignation  of  the  book  is 
not  at  the  red  heat  of  anarchy,  but  at  the  white 
heat  of  art.  Its  anger  Is  patient  and  plodding,  like 
some  historic  revenge.  Moreover,  It  slowly  and 
carefully  creates  the  real  psychology  of  oppression. 
The  endless  formality,  the  endless  unemotional  ur- 
banity, the  endless  hope  deferred,  these  things 
make  one  feel  the  fact  of  Injustice  more  than  the 
madness  of  Nero.  For  It  is  not  the  activeness  of 
tyranny  that  maddens,  but  its  passlveness.  We 
hate  the  deafness  of  the  god  more  than  his 
strength.     Silence  Is  the  unbearable  repartee. 

Again  we  can  see  in  this  book  strong  traces  of 
an  Increase  in  social  experience.  Dickens,  as  his 
fame  carried  him  Into  more  fashionable  circles, 

204 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

began  really  to  understand  something  of  what  is 
strong  and  what  is  weak  in  the  English  upper 
class.  Sir  Leicester  Deadlock  is  a  far  more  effec- 
tive condemnation  of  oligarchy  than  the  ugly 
swagger  of  Sir  Mulberry  Hawke,  because  pride 
stands  out  more  plainly  in  all  its  impotence  and 
insolence  as  the  one  weakness  of  a  good  man,  than 
as  one  of  the  million  weaknesses  of  a  bad  one. 
Dickens,  like  all  young  Radicals,  had  imagined  in 
his  youth  that  aristocracy  rested  upon  the  hardness 
of  somebody;  he  found,  as  we  all  do,  that  it  rests 
upon  the  softness  of  everybody.  It  is  very  hard  ^ 
not  to  like  Sir  Leicester  Deadlock,  not  to  applaud 
his  silly  old  speeches,  so  foolish,  so  manly,  so 
genuinely  English,  so  disastrous  to  England.  It 
is  true  that  the  English  people  love  a  lord,  but 
it  is  not  true  that  they  fear  him;  rather,  if  any- 
thing, they  pity  him;  there  creeps  into  their  love 
something  of  the  feeling  they  have  towards  a  baby 
or  a  black  man.  In  their  hearts  they  think  it 
admirable  that  Sir  Leicester  Deadlock  should  be 
able  to  speak  at  all.  And  so  a  system,  which  no 
iron  laws  and  no  bloody  battles  could  possibly  force 
upon  a  people,  is  preserved  from  generation  to 
generation  by  pure,  weak  good-nature. 

In  "  Bleak  House  "  occurs  the  character  of  Har- 
old Sklmpole,  the  character  whose  alleged  likeness 

205 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

to  Leigh  Hunt  has  laid  Dickens  open  to  so  much 
disapproval.  Unjust  disapproval,  I  think,  as  far 
as  fundamental  morals  are  concerned.  In  method 
he  was  a  little  clamorous  and  clumsy,  as,  indeed, 
he  was  apt  to  be.  But  when  he  said  that  it  was 
possible  to  combine  a  certain  tone  of  conversation 
taken  from  a  particular  man  with  other  character- 
istics which  were  not  meant  to  be  his,  he  surely 
said  what  all  men  who  write  stories  know.  A 
work  of  fiction  often  consists  in  combining  a  pair 
of  whiskers  seen  in  one  street  with  a  crime  seen 
in  another.  He  may  quite  possibly  have  really 
meant  only  to  make  Leigh  Hunt^s  light  philosophy 
the  mask  for  a  new  kind  of  scamp,  as  a  variant  on 
the  pious  mask  of  Pecksniff  or  the  candid  mask 
of  Bagstock.  He  may  never  once  have  had  the 
unfriendly  thought,  "  Suppose  Hunt  behaved 
like  a  rascal !  "  he  may  have  only  had  the 
fanciful  thought,  "  Suppose  a  rascal  behaved  like 
Hunt!" 

But  there  is  a  good  reason  for  mentioning  Skim- 
pole  especially.  In  the  character  of  Skimpole, 
Dickens  displayed  again  a  quality  that  was  very 
admirable  in  him — I  mean  a  disposition  to  see 
things  sanely  and  to  satirize  even  his  own  faults. 
He  was  commonly  occupied  in  satirizing  the  Grad- 
grinds,  the  economists,  the  men  of  Smiles  and  Self- 

206 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

Help.  For  him  there  was  nothing  poorer  than 
their  wealth,  nothing  more  selfish  than  their  self- 
denial.  And  against  them  he  was  in  the  habit  of 
pitting  the  people  of  a  more  expansive  habit — the 
happy  Swivellers  and  MIcawbers,  who,  if  they 
were  poor,  were  at  least  as  rich  as  their  last  penny 
could  make  them.  He  loved  that  great  Christian 
carelessness  that  seeks  its  meat  from  God.  It  was 
merely  a  kind  of  uncontrollable  honesty  that  forced 
him  into  urging  the  other  side.  He  could  not  dis- 
guise from  himself  or  from  the  world  that  the 
man  who  began  by  seeking  his  meat  from  God 
might  end  by  seeking  his  meat  from  his  neigh- 
bour, without  apprising  his  neighbour  of  the 
fact.  He  had  shown  how  good  irresponsibility 
could  be;  he  could  not  stoop  to  hide  how  bad  it 
could  be.  He  created  Sklmpole;  and  Skimpole  Is 
the  dark  underside  of  Micawber. 

In  attempting  Sklmpole  he  attempted  something 
with  a  great  and  urgent  meaning.  He  attempted 
it,  I  say;  I  do  not  assert  that  he  carried  it  through. 
As  has  been  remarked,  he  was  never  successful  in] 
describing  psychological  change ;  his  characters  are 
the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever.  And 
critics  have  complained  very  justly  of  the  crude 
villainy  of  Sklmpole^s  action  In  the  matter  of  Joe 
and  Mr.  Bucket.    Certainly  Skimpole  had  no  need 

207 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

to  commit  a  clumsy  treachery  to  win  a  Ciumsy 
bribe;  he  had  only  to  call  on  Mr.  Jarndyce.  He 
had  lost  his  honour  too  long  to  need  to  sell  it. 

The  effect  is  bad;  but  I  repeat  that  the  aim  was 
great.  Dickens  wished,  under  the  symbol  of  Skim- 
pole,  to  point  out  a  truth  which  is  perhaps  the  most 
terrible  in  moral  psychology.  I  mean  the  fact  that 
it  is  by  no  means  easy  to  draw  the  line  between 
light  and  heavy  offence.  He  desired  to  show  that 
there  are  no  faults,  however  kindly,  that  we  can 
afford  to  flatter  or  to  let  alone;  he  meant  that 
perhaps  Skimpole  had  once  been  as  good  a  man  as 
Swiveller.  If  flattered  or  let  alone,  our  kindliest 
fault  can  destroy  our  kindliest  virtue.  A  thing 
may  begin  as  a  very  human  weakness,  and  end  as 
a  very  inhuman  weakness.  Skimpole  means  that 
the  extremes  of  evil  are  much  nearer  than  we  think. 
A  man  may  begin  by  being  too  generous  to  pay  his 
debts,  and  end  by  being  too  mean  to  pay  his  debts. 
For  the  vices  are  very  strangely  In  league,  and 
encourage  each  other.  A  sober  man  may  become 
a  drunkard  through  being  a  coward.  A  brave 
man  may  become  a  coward  through  being  a  drunk- 
ard. That  is  the  thing  Dickens  was  darkly  trying 
to  convey  In  Skimpole — that  a  man  might  become 
a  mountain  of  selfishness  if  he  attended  only  to  the 
Dickens  virtues.     There  Is  nothing  that  can  be 

208 


THE    TIME    OF    TRANSITION 

neglected;  there  Is  no  such  thing  (he  meant)  as  a 
peccadillo. 

I  have  dwelt  on  this  consciousness  of  his  be- 
cause, alas,  It  had  a  very  sharp  edge  for  himself. 
Even  while  he  was  permitting  a  fault,  originally 
small,  to  make  a  comedy  of  Skimpole,  a  fault, 
originally  small,  was  making  a  tragedy  of  Charles 
Dickens.  For  Dickens  also  had  a  bad  quality,  not 
intrinsically  very  terrible,  which  he  allowed  to 
wreck  his  life.  He  also  had  a  small  weakness  that 
could  sometimes  become  stronger  than  all  his 
strengths.  His  selfishness  was  not.  It  need  hardly 
be  said,  the  selfishness  of  Gradgrind;  he  was  par- 
ticularly compassionate  and  liberal.  Nor  was  It 
In  the  least  the  selfishness  of  Skimpole.  He  was 
entirely  self-dependent,  Industrious,  and  dignified. 
His  selfishness  was  wholly  a  selfishness  of  the 
nerves.  Whatever  his  whim  or  the  temperature 
of  the  Instant  told  him  to  do,  must  be  done.  He 
was  the  type  of  man  who  would  break  a  window  If 
It  would  not  open  and  give  him  air.  And  this 
weakness  of  his  had,  by  the  time  of  which  we 
speak,  led  to  a  breach  between  himself  and  his  wife 
which  he  was  too  exasperated  and  excited  to  heal 
In  time.  Everything  must  be  put  right,  and  put 
right  at  once,  with  him.  If  London  bored  him,  he 
must  go  to  the  Continent  at  once ;  If  the  Continent 

209 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

bored  him,  he  must  come  back  to  London  at  once. 
If  the  day  was  too  noisy,  the  whole  household 
must  be  quiet;  if  night  was  too  quiet,  the  whole 
household  must  wake  up.  Above  all,  he  had  this 
supreme  character  of  the  domestic  despot — that 
his  good  temper  was,  if  possible,  more  despotic 
than  his  bad  temper.  When  he  was  miserable 
(as  he  often  was,  poor  fellow),  they  only  had 
to  listen  to  his  railings.  When  he  was  happy  they 
had  to  listen  to  his  novels.  All  this,  which  was 
mainly  mere  excitability,  did  not  seem  to  amount 
to  much;  it  did  not  in  the  least  mean  that  he  had 
ceased  to  be  a  clean-living  and  kind-hearted  and 
quite  honest  man.  But  there  was  this  evil  about  it 
— that  he  did  not  resist  his  little  weakness  at  all; 
he  pampered  it  as  Skimpole  pampered  his.  And 
it  separated  him  and  his  wife.  A  mere  silly  trick 
of  temperament  did  everything  that  the  blackest 
misconduct  could  have  done.  A  random  sensi- 
bility, started  about  the  shuffling  of  papers  or  the 
shutting  of  a  window,  ended  by  tearing  two  clean, 
Christian  people  from  each  other,  like  a  blast  of 
bigamy  or  adultery. 


2IO 


CHAPTER    IX 

LATER  LIFE  AND  WORKS 

I  HAVE  deliberately  in  this  book  mentioned  only 
such  facts  in  the  life  of  Dickens  as  were,  I  will 
not  say  significant  (for  all  facts  must  be  signifi- 
cant, including  the  million  facts  that  can  never 
be  mentioned  by  anybody),  but  such  facts  as  illus- 
trated my  own  immediate  meaning.  I  have  ob- 
served this  method  consistently  and  without  shame 
because  I  think  that  we  can  hardly  make  too  evi- 
dent a  chasm  between  books  which  profess  to  be 
statements  of  all  ascertainable  facts,  and  books 
which  (like  this  one)  profess  only  to  contain  a 
particular  opinion  or  a  summary  deducible  from 
the  facts.  Books  like  Forster's  exhaustive  work 
and  others  exist,  and  are  as  accessible  as  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral;  we  have  them  in  common  as  we  have 
the  facts  of  the  physical  universe;  and  it  seems 
highly  desirable  that  the  function  of  making  an 
exhaustive  catalogue  and  that  of  making  an  indi- 
vidual generalization  should  not  be  confused.  No 
catalogue,  of  course,  can  contain  all  the  facts  even 
of  five  minutes ;  every  catalogue,  however  long  and 

21  I 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

learned,  must  be  not  only  a  bold,  but,  one  may 
say,  an  audacious  selection.  But  If  a  great  many 
facts  are  given,  the  reader  gains  a  blurred  belief 
that  all  the  facts  are  being  given.  In  a  professedly 
personal  judgment  it  Is  therefore  clearer  and 
more  honest  to  give  only  a  few  illustrative  facts, 
leaving  the  other  obtainable  facts  to  balance  them. 
For  thus  it  Is  made  quite  clear  that  the  thing  is  a 
sketch,  an  affair  of  a  few  lines. 

It  IS  as  well,  however,  to  make  at  this  point  a 
pause  sufficient  to  indicate  the  main  course  of 
the  later  life  of  the  novelist.  And  it  Is  best  to 
begin  with  the  man  himself,  as  he  appeared  in 
those  last  days  of  popularity  and  public  distinction. 
Many  are  still  alive  who  remember  him  in  his 
after-dinner  speeches,  his  lectures,  and  his  many 
public  activities ;  as  I  am  not  one  of  these,  I  cannot 
correct  my  notions  with  that  flash  of  the  living 
features  without  which  a  description  may  be  subtly 
and  entirely  wrong.  Once  a  man  Is  dead.  If  It  be 
only  yesterday,  the  newcomer  must  piece  him  to- 
gether from  descriptions  really  as  much  at  random 
as  if  he  were  describing  Caesar  or  Henry  II.  Al- 
lowing, however,  for  this  inevitable  falsity,  a  figure 
vivid  and  a  little  fantastic,  does  walk  across  the 
stage  of  Forster's  "Life." 

Dickens  was  of  a  middle  size  and  his  vivacity 

212 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

and  relative  physical  insignificance  probably  gave 
rather  the  impression  of  small  size;  certainly  of 
the  absence  of  bulk.  In  early  life  he  wore,  even 
for  that  epoch,  extravagant  clusters  of  brown  hair, 
and  in  later  years,  a  brown  moustache  and  a  fringe 
of  brown  beard  (cut  like  a  sort  of  broad  and  bushy 
imperial)  sufficiently  individual  in  shape  to  give 
him  a  faint  air  as  of  a  foreigner.  His  face  had  a 
peculiar  tint  or  quality  which  is  hard  to  describe 
even  after  one  has  contrived  to  imagine  it.  It 
was  the  quality  which  Mrs.  Carlyle  felt  to  be,  as 
it  were,  metallic,  and  compared  to  clear  steel.  It 
was,  I  think,  a  sort  of  pale  glitter  and  animation, 
very  much  alive  and  yet  with  something  deathly 
about  it,  like  a  corpse  galvanized  by  a  god.  His 
face  (if  this  was  so)  was  curiously  a  counterpart 
of  his  character.  For  the  essence  of  Dickens's 
character  was  that  it  was  at  once  tremulous  and  yet 
hard  and  sharp,  just  as  the  bright  blade  of  a  sword 
is  tremulous  and  yet  hard  and  sharp.  He  vibrated 
at  every  touch  and  yet  he  was  indestructible;  you 
could  bend  him,  but  you  could  not  break  him. 
Brown  of  hair  and  beard,  somewhat  pale  of  visage 
(especially  in  his  later  days  of  excitement  and  ill- 
health)  he  had  quite  exceptionally  bright  and 
active  eyes;  eyes  that  were  always  darting  about 
like  brilliant  birds  to  pick  up  all  the  tiny  things  of 

213 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

which  he  made  more,  perhaps,  than  any  novelist 
has  done;  for  he  was  a  sort  of  poetical  Sherlock 
Holmes.  The  mouth  behind  the  brown  beard  was 
large  and  mobile,  like  the  mouth  of  an  actor;  In- 
deed he  was  an  actor,  in  many  things  too  much  of 
an  actor.  In  his  lectures,  in  later  years,  he  could 
turn  his  strange  face  into  any  of  the  Innumerable 
mad  masks  that  were  the  faces  of  his  grotesque 
characters.  He  could  make  his  face  fall  suddenly 
Into  the  blank  Inanity  of  Mrs.  Raddle's  servant,  or 
swell,  as  If  to  twice  Its  size.  Into  the  apoplectic 
energy  of  Mr.  Sergeant  Buzfuz.  But  the  outline 
of  his  face  Itself,  from  his  youth  upwards,  was  cut 
quite  delicate  and  decisive,  and  In  repose  and  Its 
own  keen  way,  may  even  have  looked  effeminate. 
The  dress  of  the  comfortable  classes  during  the 
later  years  of  Dickens  was,  compared  with  ours, 
somewhat  slipshod  and  somewhat  gaudy.  It  was 
the  time  of  loose  pegtop  trousers  of  an  almost 
Turkish  oddity,  of  large  ties,  of  loose  short  jackets 
and  of  loose  long  whiskers.  Yet  even  this  expan- 
sive period,  it  must  be  confessed,  considered  Dick- 
ens a  little  too  flashy  or,  as  some  put  It,  too  Frenchi- 
fied In  his  dress.  He  wore  velvet  coats;  he  wore 
wild  waistcoats  that  were  like  Incredible  sunsets; 
he  wore  large  hats  of  an  unnecessary  and  startling 
whiteness.    He  did  not  mind  being  seen  in  sensa- 

214 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

tional  dressing-gowns;  nay,  he  had  his  portrait 
painted  in  one  of  them.  All  this  is  not  meritorious ; 
neither  is  it  particularly  discreditable;  it  is  a  char- 
acteristic only,  but  an  important  one.  He  was  an 
absolutely  independent  and  entirely  self-respecting 
man.  But  he  had  none  of  that  old  dusty,  half- 
dignified  English  feeling  upon  which  Thackeray 
was  so  sensitive;  I  mean  the  desire  to  be  regarded 
as  a  private  gentleman,  which  means  at  bottom  the 
desire  to  be  left  alone.  This  again  is  not  a  merit; 
it  is  only  one  of  the  milder  aspects  of  aristocracy. 
But  meritorious  or  not,  Dickens  did  not  possess  it. 
He  had  no  objection  to  being  stared  at,  if  he  were 
also  admired.  He  did  not  exactly  pose  in  the 
oriental  manner  of  Disraeli ;  his  instincts  were  too 
clean  for  that;  but  he  did  pose  somewhat  in  the 
French  manner,  of  some  leaders  like  Mirabeau  and 
Gambetta.  Nor  had  he  the  dull  desire  to  "  get 
on  "  which  makes  men  die  contented  as  inarticu- 
late Under  Secretaries  of  State.  He  did  not  de- 
sire success  so  much  as  fame,  the  old  human  glory, 
the  applause  and  wonder  of  the  people.  Such  he 
was  as  he  walked  down  the  street  In  his  white  hat, 
probably  with  a  slight  swagger. 

His  private  life  consisted  of  one  tragedy  and  ten 
thousand  comedies.  By  one  tragedy  I  mean  one 
real  and  rending  moral  tragedy — the  failure  of  his 

215 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

marriage.  He  loved  his  children  dearly,  and  more 
than  one  of  them  died;  but  in  sorrows  like  these 
there  Is  no  violence  and  above  all  no  shame.  The 
end  of  life  Is  not  tragic  like  the  end  of  love.  And 
by  the  ten  thousand  comedies  I  mean  the  whole 
texture  of  his  life,  his  letters,  his  conversation, 
which  were  one  Incessant  carnival  of  Insane  and 
Inspired  Improvisation.  So  far  as  he  could  prevent 
It,  he  never  permitted  a  day  of  his  life  to  be  or- 
dinary. There  was  always  some  prank,  some  Im- 
petuous proposal,  some  practical  joke,  some  sud- 
den hospitality,  some  sudden  disappearance.  It  Is 
related  of  him  (I  give  one  anecdote  out  of  a  hun- 
dred) that  In  his  last  visit  to  America,  when  he 
was  already  reeling  as  It  were  under  the  blow  that 
was  to  be  mortal,  he  remarked  quite  casually  to 
his  companions  that  a  row  of  painted  cottages 
looked  exactly  like  the  painted  shops  In  a  panto- 
mime. No  sooner  had  the  suggestion  passed  his 
lips  than  he  leapt  at  the  nearest  doorway  and  In 
exact  Imitation  of  the  clown  In  the  harlequinade, 
beat  conscientiously  with  his  fist,  not  on  the  door 
(for  that  would  have  burst  the  canvas  scenery  of 
course),  but  on  the  side  of  the  doorpost.  Hav- 
ing done  this  he  lay  down  ceremoniously  across 
the  doorstep  for  the  owner  to  fall  over  him  If  he 
should  come  rushing  out.    He  then  got  up  gravely 

216 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

and  went  on  his  way.  His  whole  life  was  full  of 
such  unexpected  energies,  precisely  like  those  of 
the  pantomime  clown.  Dickens  had  indeed  a  great 
and  fundamental  affinity  with  the  landscape,  or 
rather  house-scape,  of  the  harlequinade.  He  liked 
high  houses,  and  sloping  roofs,  and  deep  areas. 
But  he  would  have  been  really  happy  if  some  good 
fairy  of  the  eternal  pantomime  had  given  him  the 
power  of  flying  off  the  roofs  and  pitching  harm- 
lessly down  the  height  of  the  houses  and  bounding 
out  of  the  areas  like  an  indiarubber  ball.  The 
divine  lunatic  in  "  Nicholas  Nickleby  "  comes  near- 
est to  his  dream.  I  really  think  Dickens  would 
rather  have  been  that  one  of  his  characters  than 
any  of  the  others.  With  what  excitement  he  would 
have  struggled  down  the  chimney.  With  what 
ecstatic  energy  he  would  have  hurled  the  cucum- 
bers over  the  garden  wall. 

His  letters  exhibit  even  more  the  same  incessant 
creative  force.  His  letters  are  as  creative  as  any 
of  his  literary  creations.  His  shortest  postcard  is 
often  as  good  as  his  ablest  novel ;  each  one  of  them 
is  spontaneous;  each  one  of  them  is  different.  He 
varies  even  the  form  and  shape  of  the  letter  as  far 
as  possible;  now  it  is  in  absurd  French!  now  it  is 
from  one  of  his  characters;  now  it  is  an  advertise- 
ment for  himself  as  a  stray  dog.    All  of  them  are 

217 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

very  funny ;  they  are  not  only  very  funny,  but  they 
are  quite  as  funny  as  his  finished  and  published 
work.  This  Is  the  ultimately  amazing  thing  about 
Dickens;  the  amount  there  Is  of  him.  He  wrote, 
at  the  very  least,  sixteen  thick  Important  books 
packed  full  of  original  creation.  And  If  you 
had  burnt  them  all  he  could  have  written  six- 
teen more,  as  a  man  writes  Idle  letters  to  his 
friend. 

In  connection  with  this  exuberant  part  of  his 
nature  there  Is  another  thing  to  be  noted,  If  we  are 
to  make  a  personal  picture  of  him.  Many  modern 
people,  chiefly  women,  have  been  heard  to  object 
to  the  Bacchic  element  In  the  books  of  Dickens, 
that  celebration  of  social  drinking  as  a  supreme 
symbol  of  social  living,  which  those  books  share 
with  almost  all  the  great  literature  of  mankind. 
Including  the  New  Testament.  Undoubtedly  there 
is  an  abnormal  amount  of  drinking  in  a  page  of 
Dickens,  as  there  is  an  abnormal  amount  of  fight- 
ing, say,  in  a  page  of  Dumas.  If  you  reckon  up 
the  beers  and  brandies  of  Mr.  Bob  Sawyer,  with 
the  care  of  an  arithmetician  and  the  deductions  of 
a  pathologist,  they  rise  alarmingly,  like  a  rising 
tide  at  sea.  Dickens  did  defend  drink  clamo- 
rously, praised  it  with  passion,  and  described  whole 
orgies  of  It  with  enormous  gusto.    Yet  it  is  won- 

2i8 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

derfully  typical  of  his  prompt  and  impatient  nature 
that  he  himself  drank  comparatively  little.  He 
was  the  type  of  man  who  could  be  so  eager  In 
praising  the  cup  that  he  left  the  cup  untasted.  It 
was  a  part  of  his  active  and  feverish  temperament 
that  he  did  not  drink  wine  very  much.  But  It 
was  a  part  of  his  humane  philosophy,  of  his 
religion,  that  he  did  drink  wine.  To  healthy 
European  philosophy,  wine  is  a  symbol;  to 
European  religion  It  Is  a  sacrament.  Dickens 
approved  It  because  It  was  a  great  human  Institu- 
tion, one  of  the  rites  of  civilization,  and  this  It 
certainly  is.  The  teetotaller  who  stands  outside 
It  may  have  perfectly  clear  ethical  reasons  of  his 
own,  as  a  man  may  have  who  stands  outside  educa- 
tion or  nationality,  who  refuses  to  go  to  an  Uni- 
versity or  to  serve  In  an  Army.  But  he  Is  neglect- 
ing one  of  the  great  social  things  that  man  has 
added  to  nature.  The  teetotaller  has  chosen  a 
most  unfortunate  phrase  for  the  drunkard  when 
he  says  that  the  drunkard  Is  making  a  beast  of 
himself.  The  man  who  drinks  ordinarily  makes 
nothing  but  an  ordinary  man  of  himself.  The 
man  who  drinks  excessively  makes  a  devil  of  him- 
self. But  nothing  connected  with  a  human  and 
artistic  thing  like  wine  can  bring  one  nearer  to 
the  brute  life  of  nature.    The  only  man  who  Is,  In 

219 


^ 


CHARLES     DICKENS 


^_    ^he  exact  and  literal  sense  of  the  words,  making 
a  beast  of  himself  is  the  teetotaller. 

The  tone  of  Dickens  towards  religion,  though 
ike  that  of  most  of  his  contemporaries,  philo- 
sophically disturbed  and  rather  historically  Igno- 
rant, had  an  element  that  was  very  characteristic 
of  himself.  He  had  all  the  prejudices  of  his  time. 
I  He  had,  for  instance,  that  dislike  of  defined  dog- 
jmas,  which  really  means  a  preference  for  unex- 
amined dogmas.  He  had  the  usual  vague  notion 
that  the  whole  of  our  human  past  was  packed  with 
nothing  but  insane  Tories.  He  had,  in  a  word, 
all  the  old  Radical  ignorances  which  went  along 
with  the  old  Radical  acuteness  and  courage  and 
public  spirit.  But  this  spirit  tended,  in  almost  all 
the  others  who  held  it,  to  a  specific  dislike  of  the 
Church  of  England;  and  a  disposition  to  set  the 
other  sects  against  It,  as  truer  types  of  inquiry,  or 
of  individualism.  Dickens  had  a  definite  tender- 
ness for  the  Church  of  England.  He  might  have 
even  called  It  a  weakness  for  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, but  he  had  it.  Something  In  those  placid 
services,  something  In  that  reticent  and  humane 
liturgy  pleased  him  against  all  the  tendencies  of 
his  time;  pleased  him  In  the  best  part  of  himself, 
his  virile  love  of  charity  and  peace.  Once,  In  a 
puff  of  anger  at  the  Church's  political  stupidity 

220 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

(which  Is  Indeed  profound),  he  left  It  for  a  week 
or  two  and  went  to  an  Unitarian  Chapel;  In  a 
week  or  two  he  came  back.  This  curious  and 
sentimental  hold  of  the  English  Church  upon  him  V 
Increased  with  years.  In  the  book  he  was  at 
work  on  when  he  died  he  describes  the  Minor 
Canon,  humble,  chivalrous,  tender-hearted,  answer- 
ing with  Indignant  simplicity  the  froth  and  plat- 
form righteousness  of  the  sectarian  philanthropist. 
He  upholds  Canon  Crisparkle  and  satirizes  Mr. 
Honeythunder.  Almost  every  one  of  the  other 
Radicals,  his  friends,  would  have  upheld  Mr. 
Honeythunder  and  satirized  Canon  ^rlsp^xklc— -- 
I  have  mentioned  this  matter  for  a  special  rea- 
son. It  brings  us  back  to  that  apparent  contra- 
diction or  dualism  In  Dickens  to  which.  In  one 
connection  or  another,  I  have  often  adverted,  and 
which.  In  one  shape  or  another,  constitutes  the 
whole  crux  of  his  character.  I  mean  the  union  of 
a  general  wlldness  approaching  lunacy,  with  a  sort 
of  secret  moderation  almost  amounting  to  medioc- 
rity. Dickens  was,  more  or  less,  the  man  I  have 
described — sensitive,  theatrical,  amazing,  a  bit  of 
a  dandy,  a  bit  of  a  buffoon.  Nor  are  such  charac- 
teristics, whether  weak  or  wild,  entirely  accidents 
or  externals.  He  had  some  false  theatrical  ten- 
dencies Integral  In  his  nature.     For  Instance,  he  ■'^ 

221 


be 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

had  one  most  unfortunate  habit,  a  habit  that  often 
put  him  In  the  wrong,  even  when  he  happened  to 
be  In  the  right.  He  had  an  Incurable  habit  of  ex- 
lalnlng  himself.  This  reduced  his  admirers  to 
tlie  mental  condition  of  the  authentic  but  hitherto 
uncelebrated  little  girl  who  said  to  her  mother,  "  I 
think  I  should  understand  If  only  you  wouldn't 
explain."  Dickens  always  would  explain.  It  was 
a  part  of  that  Instinctive  publicity  of  his  which 
made  him  at  once  a  splendid  democrat  and  a  little 
too  much  of  an  actor.  He  carried  It  to  the  craziest 
lengths.  He  actually  wanted  to  have  printed  In 
Punch,  It  Is  said,  an  apology  for  his  own  action  In 
the  matter  of  his  marriage.  That  Incident  alone 
is  enough  to  suggest  that  his  external  offers  and 
proposals  were  sometimes  like  screams  heard  from 
Bedlam.  Yet  It  remains  true  that  he  had  In  him  a 
central  part  that  was  pleased  only  by  the  most 
decent  and  the  most  reposeful  rites,  by  things  of 
which  the  Anglican  prayer-book  Is  very  typical. 
It  is  certainly  true  that  he  was  often  extravagant. 
It  is  most  certainly  equally  true  that  he  detested 
and  despised  extravagance. 

The  best  explanation  can  be  found  in  his  literary 
genius.  His  literary  genius  consisted  in  a  contra- 
dictory capacity  at  once  to  entertain  and  to  deride 
— very  ridiculous  ideas.     If  he  Is  a  buffoon,  he  is 

222 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

laughing  at  buffoonery.  His  books  were  In  some 
ways  the  wildest  on  the  face  of  the  world.  Rabe- 
lais did  not  Introduce  Into  Paphlagonia  or  the 
Kingdom  of  the  Coqclgrues  satiric  figures  more 
frantic  and  misshapen  than  Dickens  made  to  walk 
about  the  Strand  and  Lincoln's  Inn.  But  for  all 
that,  you  come,  In  the  core  of  him,  on  a  sudden 
quietude  and  good  sense.  Such,  I  think,  was  the 
core  of  Rabelais,  such  were  all  the  far-stretching 
and  violent  satirists.  This  Is  a  point  essential  to 
Dickens,  though  very  little  comprehended  in  our 
current  tone  of  thought.  Dickens  was  an  Immod- 
erate jester,  but  a  moderate  thinker.  He  was  an 
Immoderate  jester  because  he  was  a  moderate 
thinker.  What  we  moderns  call  the  wlldness  of 
his  Imagination  was  actually  created  by  what  we 
moderns  call  the  tameness  of  his  thought.  I  mean 
that  he  felt  the  full  Insanity  of  all  extreme  ten- 
dencies, because  he  was  himself  so  sane;  he  felt 
eccentricities,  because  he  was  in  the  centre.  We 
are  always,  In  these  days,  asking  our  violent 
prophets  to  write  violent  satires;  but  violent 
prophets  can  never  possibly  write  violent  satires. 
In  order  to  write  satire  like  that  of  Rabelais — satire 
that  juggles  with  the  stars  and  kicks  the  world 
about  like  a  football — It  Is  necessary  to  be  one's 
self  temperate,  and  even  mild.     A  modern  man 

223 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

like  Nietzsche,  a  modem  man  like  Gorky,  a  mod- 
ern man  like  d'AnnunzIo,  could  not  possibly  write 
real  and  riotous  satire.  They  are  themselves  too 
much  on  the  borderlands.  They  could  not  be  a 
success  as  caricaturists,  for  they  are  already  a  great 
success  as  caricatures. 

I  have  mentioned  his  religious  preference  merely 
as  an  instance  of  this  interior  moderation.  To 
say,  as  some  have  done,  that  he  attacked  Non- 
conformity is  quite  a  false  way  of  putting  it.  It 
is  clean  across  the  whole  trend  of  the  man  and 
his  time  to  suppose  that  he  could  have  felt  bitter- 
ness against  any  theological  body  as  a  theological 
body;  but  anything  like  religious  extravagance, 
whether  Protestant  or  Catholic,  moved  him  to  an 
extravagance  of  satire.  And  he  flung  himself  into 
the  drunken  energy  of  Stigglns,  he  piled  up  to  the 
stars  the  "  verbose  flights  of  stairs  "  of  Mr.  Chad- 
band,  exactly  because  his  own  conception  of  reli- 
gion was  the  quiet  and  Impersonal  Morning 
Prayer.  It  Is  typical  of  him  that  he  had  a  peculiar 
hatred  for  speeches  at  the  graveside. 

An  even  clearer  case  of  what  I  mean  can  be 
found  In  his  political  attitude.  He  seemed  to  some 
an  almost  anarchic  satirist.  He  made  equal  fun 
of  the  systems  which  reformers  made  war  on,  and 
of  the  Instruments  on  which  reformers  relied.    He 

224 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

made  no  secret  of  his  feeling  that  the  average 
English  premier  was  an  accidental  ass.  In  two 
superb  sentences  he  summed  up  and  swept  away 
the  whole  British  constitution:  "  England,  for  the 
last  week,  has  been  In  an  awful  state.  Lord  Coodle 
would  go  out.  Sir  Thomas  Doodle  wouldn't  come 
In,  and  there  being  no  people  In  England  to  speak 
of  except  Coodle  and  Doodle,  the  country  has  been 
without  a  government."  He  lumped  all  cabinets 
and  all  government  offices  together,  and  made  the 
same  game  of  them  all.  He  created  his  most  stag- 
gering humbugs,  his  most  adorable  and  Incredible 
idiots,  and  set  them  on  the  highest  thrones  of  our 
national  system.  To  many  moderate  and  progres- 
sive people,  such  a  satirist  seemed  to  be  Insulting 
heaven  and  earth,  ready  to  wreck  society  for  some 
mad  alternative,  prepared  to  pull  down  St.  Paul's, 
and  on  Its  ruins  erect  a  gory  guillotine.  Yet,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  this  apparent  wUdness  of  his  came 
from  his  being,  If  anything,  a  very  moderate  poli- 
tician. It  came,  not  at  all  from  fanaticism,  but 
from  a  rather  rational  detachment.  He  had  the 
sense  to  see  that  the  British  constitution  was  not 
democracy,  but  the  British  constitution.  It  was 
an  artificial  system — like  any  other,  good  In  some 
ways,  bad  in  others.  His  satire  of  It  sounded  wild 
to  those  that  worshipped  it;  but  his  satire  of  it 

225 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

.  arose  not  from  his  having  any  wild  enthusiasm 
I  against  It,  but  simply  from  his  not  having,  like 
every  one  else,  a  wild  enthusiasm  for  It.  Alone,  as 
far  as  I  know,  among  all  the  great  Englishmen  of 
that  age,  he  realized  the  thing  that  Frenchmen  and 
Irishmen  understand.  I  mean  the  fact  that  popu- 
lar government  Is  one  thing,  and  representative 
government  another.  He  realized  that  representa- 
tive government  has  many  minor  disadvantages, 
one  of  them  being  that  It  is  never  representa- 
tive. He  speaks  of  his  *'  hope  to  have  made  every 
man  In  England  feel  something  of  the  contempt 
for  the  House  of  Commons  that  I  have."  He 
says  also  these  two  things,  both  of  which  are  won- 
derfully penetrating  as  coming  from  a  good  Radi- 
cal In  1855,  for  they  contain  a  perfect  statement 
of  the  peril  In  which  we  now  stand,  and  which  may, 
If  It  please  God,  sting  us  Into  avoiding  the  long 
vista  at  the  end  of  which  one  sees  so  clearly  the 
dignity  and  the  decay  of  Venice — 

"  I  am  hourly  strengthened,'*  he  says,  **  in  my 
old  belief,  that  our  political  aristocracy  and  our 
tuft-huntIng  are  the  death  of  England.  In  all 
this  business  I  don't  see  a  gleam  of  hope.  As  to 
the  popular  spirit.  It  has  come  to  be  so  entirely 
separated  from  the  Parliament  and  the  Govern- 
ment, and  so  perfectly  apathetic  about  them  both, 

226 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

that  I  seriously  think  It  a  most  portentous  sign.'' 
And  he  says  also  this:  "I  really  am  serious  in 
thinking — and  I  have  given  as  painful  considera- 
tion to  the  subject  as  a  man  with  children  to  live 
and  suffer  after  him  can  possibly  give  it — that 
representative  government  is  become  altogether  a 
failure  with  us,  that  the  English  gentilities  and 
subserviences  render  the  people  unfit  for  It,  and  the 
whole  thing  has  broken  down  since  the  great  sev- 
enteenth century  time,  and  has  no  hope  In  It." 

These  are  the  words  of  a  wise  and  perhaps 
melancholy  man,  but  certainly  not  of  an  unduly 
excited  one.  It  is  worth  noting,  for  instance,  how 
much  more  directly  Dickens  goes  to  the  point  than 
Carlyle  did,  who  noted  many  of  the  same  evils. 
But  Carlyle  fancied  that  our  modern  English  gov- 
ernment was  wordy  and  long-winded  because  It 
was  democratic  government.  Dickens  saw,  what 
Is  certainly  the  fact,  that  It  Is  wordy  and  long- 
winded  because  It  is  aristocratic  government,  the 
two  most  pleasant  aristocratic  qualities  being  a  love 
of  literature  and  an  unconsciousness  of  time.  But 
all  this  amounts  to  the  same  conclusion  of  the 
matter.  Frantic  figures  like  Stigglns  and  Chad- 
band  were  created  out  of  the  quietude  of  his 
religious  preference.  Wild  creations  like  the  Bar- 
nacles and  the  Bounderbys  were  produced  In  a  kind 

227 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

of  ecstasy  of  tne  ordinary,  of  the  obvious  In 
political  justice.  His  monsters  were  made  out  of 
his  level  and  his  moderation,  as  the  old  monsters 
were  made  out  of  the  level  sea. 

Such  was  the  man  of  genius  we  must  try  to  Imag- 
ine; violently  emotional,  yet  with  a  good  judg- 
ment; pugnacious,  but  only  when  he  thought  him- 
self oppressed;  prone  to  think  himself  oppressed, 
yet  not  cynical  about  human  motives.  He  was  a 
man  remarkably  hard  to  understand  or  to  reani- 
mate. He  almost  always  had  reasons  for  his 
action;  his  error  was  that  he  always  expounded 
them.  Sometimes  his  nerve  snapped;  and  then  he 
was  mad.  Unless  It  did  so  he  was  quite  unusually 
sane. 
-r^T^  Such  a  rough  sketch  at  least  must  suffice  us  in 
order  to  summarize  his  later  years.  Those  years 
were  occupied,  of  course,  in  two  main  additions  to 
his  previous  activities.  The  first  was  the  series  of 
public  readings  and  lectures  which  he  now  began 
to  give  systematically.  The  second  was  his  suc- 
cessive editorship  of  Household  JVords  and  of  All 
the  Year  Round.  He  was  of  a  type  that  enjoys 
every  new  function  and  opportunity.  He  had  been 
so  many  things  in  his  life,  a  reporter,  an  actor,  a 
conjurer,  a  poet.  As  he  had  enjoyed  them  all,  so 
he  enjoyed  being  a  lecturer,  and  enjoyed  being  an 

228 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

editor.  It  IS  certain  that  his  audiences  (who  some- 
times stacked  themselves  so  thick  that  they  lay 
flat  on  the  platform  all  round  him)  enjoyed  his 
being  a  lecturer.  It  Is  not  so  certain  that  the  sub- 
editors enjoyed  his  being  an  editor.  But  In  both 
connections  the  main  matter  of  importance  is  the 
effect  on  the  permanent  work  of  Dickens  himself. 
The  readings  were  important  for  this  reason,  that 
they  fixed,  as  if  by  some  public  and  pontifical  pro- 
nouncement, what  was  Dickens's  Interpretation  of 
Dickens's  work.  Such  a  knowledge  is  mere  tradi- 
tion, but  it  Is  very  forcible.  My  own  family  has 
handed  on  to  me,  and  I  shall  probably  hand  on 
to  the  next  generation,  a  definite  memory  of  how 
Dickens  made  his  face  suddenly  like  the  face  of 
an  idiot  in  impersonating  Mrs.  Raddle's  servant, 
Betsy.  This  does  serve  one  of  the  permanent  pur- 
poses of  tradition;  It  does  make  it  a  little  more 
difficult  for  any  Ingenious  person  to  prove  that 
Betsy  was  meant  to  be  a  brilliant  satire  on  the 
over-cultivation  of  the  intellect. 

As  for  his  relation  to  his  two  magazines,  It  is 
chiefly  Important,  first  for  the  admirable  things 
that  he  wrote  In  the  magazines  himself  (one  can- 
not forbear  to  mention  the  Inimitable  monologue 
of  the  waiter  in  "Somebody's  Luggage"),  and 
secondly  for  the  fact  that  in  his  capacity  of  editor 

229 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

he  made  one  valuable  discovery.  He  discovered 
Wilkie  Collins.  Wilkie  Collins  was  the  one  man 
of  unmistakable  genius  who  has  a  certain  affinity 
with  Dickens;  an  affinity  in  this  respect,  that  they 
both  combine  in  a  curious  way  a  modern  and  cock- 
ney and  even  commonplace  opinion  about  things 
with  a  huge  elemental  sympathy  with  strange  ora- 
cles and  spirits  and  old  night.  There  were  no  two 
men  in  Mid-Victorian  England,  with  their  top-hats 
and  umbrellas,  more  typical  of  Its  rationality  and 
dull  reform ;  and  there  were  no  two  men  who  could 
touch  them  at  a  ghost  story.  No  two  men  would 
have  more  contempt  for  superstitions;  and  no  two 
men  could  so  create  the  superstitious  thrill.  In- 
deed, our  modern  mystics  make  a  mistake  when 
they  wear  long  hair  or  loose  ties  to  attract  the 
spirits.  The  elves  and  the  old  gods  when  they 
revisit  the  earth  really  go  straight  for  a  dull  top- 
hat.  For  It  means  simplicity,  which  the  gods  love. 
Meanwhile  his  books,  which,  as  brilliant  as  ever, 
were  appearing  from  time  to  time,  bore  witness  to 
that  Increasing  tendency  to  a  more  careful  and 
responsible  treatment  which  we  have  marked  In 
the  transition  which  culminated  In  "  Bleak  House." 
His  next  important  book,  "  Hard  Times,"  strikes 
an  almost  unexpected  note  of  severity.  The  char- 
acters are  Indeed  exaggerated,  but  they  are  bitterly 

230 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

and  deliberately  exaggerated  they  are  not  exag- 
gerated with  the  old  unconscious  high  spirits  of 
Nicholas  Nickleby  or  Martin  Chuzzlewit.  Dick- 
ens exaggerates  Bounderby  because  he  really  hates 
him.  He  exaggerated  Pecksniff  because  he  really 
loved  him.  "  Hard  Times  "  is  not  one  of  the  ) 
greatest  books  of  Dickens;  but  it  is  perhaps  in  a 
sense  one  of  his  greatest  monuments.  It  stamps 
and  records  the  reality  of  Dickens's  emotion  on  aj,. 
great  many  things  that  were  then  considered  un-j 
philosophical  grumblings,  but  which  since  have| 
swelled  into  the  immense  phenomenon  of  the  so- 
cialist philosophy.  To  call  Dickens  a  Socialist  is  a 
wild  exaggeration;  but  the  truth  and  peculiarity 
of  his  position  might  be  expressed  thus :  that  even 
when  everybody  thought  that  Liberalism  meant 
individualism  he  was  emphatically  a  Liberal  and 
emphatically  not  an  individualist.  Or  the  truth 
might  be  better  still  stated  in  this  manner:  that 
he  saw  that  there  was  a  secret  thing,  called  human- 
ity, to  which  both  extreme  socialism  and  extreme 
individualism  were  profoundly  and  inexpressibly 
indifferent,  and  that  this  permanent  and  presiding 
humanity  was  the  thing  he  happened  to  under- 
stand; he  knew  that  individualism  is  nothing  and 
non-individualism  is  nothing  but  the  keeping  of  the 
commandment  of  man.     He   felt,   as  a  novelist 

231 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

should,  that  the  qut?tion  Is  too  much  discussed  as 
to  whether  a  man  is  in  favour  of  this  or  that  scien- 
tific philosophy;  that  there  is  another  question, 
whether  the  scientific  philosophy  is  in  favour  of 
the  man.  That  Is  why  such  books  as  "  Hard 
Times  "  will  remain  always  a  part  of  the  power 
and  tradition  of  Dickens.  He  saw  that  economic 
systems  are  not  things  like  the  stars,  but  things 
like  the  lamp-posts,  manifestations  of  the  human 
mind,  and  things  to  be  judged  by  the  human 
heart. 

Thenceforward  until  the  end  his  books  grow 
consistently  graver  and,  as  It  were,  more  responsi- 
ble; he  Improves  as  an  artist  If  not  always  as  a 
creator.  "Little  Dorrit "  (published  In  1857) 
Is  at  once  In  some  ways  so  much  more  subtle  and 
in  every  way  so  much  more  sad  than  the  rest  of 
his  work  that  It  bores  DIckensIans  and  especially 
pleases  George  GIssIng.  It  Is  the  only  one  of  the 
Dickens  tales  which  could  please  GIssIng,  not  only 
by  Its  genius,  but  also  by  Its  atmosphere.  There  is 
something  a  little  modern  and  a  little  sad,  some- 
thing also  out  of  tune  with  the  main  trend  of 
Dickens's  moral  feeling,  about  the  description  of 
th6  character  of  Dorrit  as  actually  and  finally 
weakened  by  his  wasting  experiences,  as  not  lifting 
any  cry  above  the  conquered  years.     It  Is  but  a 

232 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

faint  fleck  of  shadow.  But  the  Illimitable  white 
light  of  human  hopefulness,  of  which  I  spoke  at 
the  beginning,  is  ebbing  away,  the  work  of  the 
revolution  is  growing  weaker  everywhere;  and 
the  night  of  necessitarianism  cometh  when  no  man 
can  work.  For  the  first  time  In  a  book  by  Dickens 
perhaps  we  really  do  feel  that  the  hero  Is  forty- 
five.  Clennam  Is  certainly  very  much  older  than 
Mr.  Pickwick. 

This  was  indeed  only  a  fugitive  grey  cloud; 
he  went  on  to  breezier  operations.  But  whatever 
they  were,  they  still  had  the  note  of  the  later  days. 
They  have  a  more  cautious  craftsmanship;  they 
have  a  more  mellow  and  a  more  mixed  human 
sentiment.  Shadows  fell  upon  his  page  from  the 
other  and  sadder  figures  out  of  the  Victorian  de- 
cline. A  good  Instance  of  this  is  his  next  book, 
"  The  Tale  of  Two  Cities  "  (1859).  In  dignity 
and  eloquence  It  almost  stands  alone  among  the 
books  by  Dickens,  but  it  also  stands  alone  among 
his  books  in  this  respect,  that  It  Is  not  entirely  by 
Dickens.  It  owes  Its  inspiration  avowedly  to  the 
passionate  and  cloudy  pages  of  Carlyle's  "  French 
Revolution."  And  there  Is  something  quite  essen- 
tially Inconsistent  between  Carlyle's  disturbed  and 
half-sceptical  transcendentalism  and  the  original 
school  and  spirit  to  which  Dickens  belonged,  the 

233 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

lucid  and  laughing  decisiveness  of  the  old  con- 
vinced and  contented  Radicalism.  Hence  the 
genius  of  Dickens  cannot  save  him,  just  as  the 
great  genius  of  Carlyle  could  not  save  him  from 
making  a  picture  of  the  French  Revolution,  which 
was  delicately  and  yet  deeply  erroneous.  Both 
tend  too  much  to  represent  it  as  a  mere  elemental 
outbreak  of  hunger  or  vengeance;  they  do  not  see 
enough  that  it  was  a  war  for  intellectual  princi- 
ples, even  for  intellectual  platitudes.  We,  the 
modern  English,  cannot  easily  understand  the 
French  Revolution,  because  we  cannot  easily  un- 
derstand the  idea  of  bloody  battle  for  pure  com- 
mon sense;  we  cannot  understand  common  sense 
in  arms  and  conquering.  In  modern  England  com- 
mon sense  appears  to  mean  putting  up  with  exist- 
ing conditions.  For  us  a  practical  politician  really 
means  a  man  who  can  be  thoroughly  trusted  to  do 
nothing  at  all ;  that  is  where  his  practicality  comes 
In.  The  French  feeling — the  feeling  at  the  back 
of  the  Revolution — was  that  the  more  sensible  a 
man  was,  the  more  you  must  look  out  for 
slaughter. 

In  all  the  Imitators  of  Carlyle,  including  Dick- 
ens, there  is  an  obscure  sentiment  that  the  thing 
for  which  the  Frenchmen  died  must  have  been 
something  new  and  queer,  a  paradox,  a  strange 
Idolatry.    But  when  such  blood  ran  In  the  streets, 

234 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

It  was  for  the  sake  of  a  truism;  when  those  cities 
were  shaken  to  their  foundations,  they  were  shaken 
to  their  foundations  by  a  truism. 

I  have  mentioned  this  historical  matter  because 
it  illustrates  these  later  and  more  mingled  influ- 
ences which  at  once  improve  and  as  it  were  perplex 
the  later  work  of  Dickens.  For  Dickens  had  in 
his  original  mental  composition  capacities  for 
understanding  this  cheery  and  sensible  element 
in  the  French  Revolution  far  better  than  Carlyle. 
The  French  Revolution  was,  among  other  things, 
French,  and,  so  far  as  that  goes,  could  never  have 
a  precise  counterpart  in  so  jolly  and  autochthonous 
an  Englishman  as  Charles  Dickens.  But  there  was 
a  great  deal  of  the  actual  and  unbroken  tradition 
of  the  Revolution  itself  in  his  early  radical  indict- 
ments; in  his  denunciations  of  the  Fleet  Prison 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  the  capture  of  the  Bas- 
tille. There  was,  above  all,  a  certain  reasonable 
Impatience  which  was  the  essence  of  the  old  Repub- 
lican, and  which  Is  quite  unknown  to  the  Revolu- 
tionist in  modern  Europe.  The  old  Radical  did 
not  feel  exactly  that  he  was  "  In  revolt;  "  he  felt 
If  anything  that  a  number  of  idiotic  institutions 
had  revolted  against  reason  and  against  him. 
Dickens,  I  say,  had  the  revolutionary  idea,  though 
an  English  form  of  It,  by  clear  and  conscious  In- 
heritance; Carlyle  had  to  rediscover  the  Revolu- 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

tlon  by  a  violence  of  genius  and  vision.  If  Dick- 
ens, then,  took  from  Carlyle  (as  he  said  he  did) 
his  Image  of  the  Revolution,  it  does  certainly  mean 
that  he  had  forgotten  something  of  his  own  youth 
and  come  under  the  more  complex  influences  of 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  His  old  hilari- 
ous and  sentimental  view  of  human  nature  seems 
for  a  moment  dimmed  In  "  Little  Dorrlt."  His 
old  political  simplicity  has  been  slightly  disturbed 
by  Carlyle. 

I  repeat  that  this  graver  note  is  varied,  but  it 
remains  a  graver  note.  We  see  It  struck,  I  think, 
with  particular  and  remarkable  success  in  "  Great 
Expectations  "  (i 860-61).  This  fine  story  Is  told 
with  a  consistency  and  quietude  of  Individuality 
which  Is  rare  in  Dickens.  But  so  far  had  he 
travelled  along  the  road  of  a  heavier  reality,  that 
he  even  Intended  to  give  the  tale  an  unhappy 
ending,  making  Pip  lose  Estella  for  ever;  and  he 
was  only  dissuaded  from  It  by  the  robust  romanti- 
cism of  Bulwer-Lytton.  But  the  best  part  of  the 
tale — the  account  of  the  vacillations  of  the  hero 
between  the  humble  life  to  which  he  owes  every- 
thing, and  the  gorgeous  life  from  which  he  expects 
something,  touch  a  very  true  and  somew^hat  tragic 
part  of  morals;  for  the  great  paradox  of  morality 
(the  paradox  to  which  only  the  religions  have 

236 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

given  an  adequate  expression)  is  that  the  very 
vilest  kind  of  fault  is  exactly  the  most  easy  kind. 
We  read  in  books  and  ballads  about  the  wild  fellow 
who  might  kill  a  man  or  smoke  opium,  but  who 
would  never  stoop  to  lying  or  cowardice  or  to 
'^  anything  mean.'*  But  for  actual  .hum;an  beings 
opium  and  slaughter  have  only  occasional  charm; 
the  permanent  human  temptation  is  the  temjJtation 
to  be  mean.  The  one  standing  probability  is  the 
probability  of  becoming  a  cowardly  hypocrite. 
The  circle  of  the  traitors  is  the  lowest  of  the 
abyss,  and  it  is  also  the  easiest  to  fall  into.  That 
Is  one  of  the  ringing  realities  of  the  Bible,  that  it 
does  not  make  its  great  men  commit  grand  sins; 
it  makes  its  great  men  (such  as  David  and 
St.  Peter)  commit  small  sins  and  behave  like 
sneaks. 

Dickens  has  dealt  with  this  easy  descent  of 
desertion,  this  silent  treason,  with  remarkable  accu- 
racy in  the  account  of  the  indecisions  of  Pip. 
It  contains  a  good  suggestion  of  that  weak  romance 
which  is  the  root  of  all  snobbishness:  that  the 
mystery  which  belongs  to  patrician  life  excites  us 
more  than  the  open,  even  the  indecent  virtues  of 
the  humble.  Pip  is  keener  about  Miss  Havisham, 
who  may  mean  well  by  him,  than  about  Joe  Gar- 
gery,  who  evidently  does.    All  this  is  very  strong 

237 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

and  wholesome;  but  It  Is  still  a  little  stern.  "  Our 
Mutual  Friend"  (1864)  brings  us  back  a  little 
into  his  merrier  and  more  normal  manner;  some 
of  the  satire,  such  as  that  upon  Veneerlng's  elec- 
tion, is  in  the  best  of  his  old  style,  so  airy  and 
fanciful,  yet  hitting  so  suddenly  and  so  hard.  But 
even  here  we  find  the  fuller  and  more  serious  treat- 
ment of  psychology;  notably  in  the  two  facts  that 
he  creates  a  really  human  villain,  Bradley  Head- 
stone, and  also  one  whom  we  might  call  a  really 
human  hero,  Eugene,  If  it  were  not  that  he  Is  much 
too  human  to  be  called  a  hero  at  all.  It  has  been 
said  (Invariably  by  cads)  that  Dickens  never  de- 
scribed a  gentleman ;  it  Is  like  saying  that  he  never 
described  a  zebra.  A  gentleman  is  a  very  rare 
animal  among  human  creatures,  and  to  people 
like  Dickens,  interested  In  all  humanity,  not  a 
supremely  Important  one.  But  In  Eugene  Wray- 
burne  he  does,  whether  consciously  or  not,  turn 
that  accusation  with  a  vengeance.  For  he  not  only 
describes  a  gentleman  but  describes  the  Inner  weak- 
ness and  peril  that  belong  to  a  gentleman,  the  devil 
that  Is  always  rending  the  entrails  of  an  Idle  and 
agreeable  man.  In  Eugene's  purposeless  pursuit 
of  Lizzie  Hexam,  in  his  yet  more  purposeless 
torturing  of  Bradley  Headstone,  the  author  has 
marvellously  realized  that  singular  empty  obsti- 

238 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

nacy  that  drives  the  whims  and  pleasures  of  a 
leisured  class.  He  sees  that  there  is  nothing  that 
such  a  man  more  stubbornly  adheres  to,  than  the 
thing  that  he  does  not  particularly  want  to  do. 
We  are  still  in  serious  psychology. 

His  last  book  represents  yet  another  new  depar- 
ture, dividing  him  from  the  chaotic  Dickens  of 
days  long  before.  His  last  book  Is  not  merely  an 
attempt  to  Improve  his  power  of  construction  in 
a  story:  It  is  an  attempt  to  rely  entirely  on  that 
power  of  construction.  It  not  only  has  a  plot,  it 
is  a  plot.  "  The  Mystery  of  Edwin  Drood " 
(1870)  was  In  such  a  sense,  perhaps,  the  most 
ambitious  book  that  Dickens  ever  attempted.  It 
is,  as  every  one  knows,  a  detective  story,  and  cer- 
tainly a  very  successful  one,  as  Is  attested  by  the 
tumult  of  discussion  as  to  Its  proper  solution.  In 
this,  quite  apart  from  Its  unfinished  state,  it  stands, 
I  think,  alone  among  the  author's  works.  Else- 
where, If  he  introduced  a  mystery,  he  seldom  took 
the  trouble  to  make  It  very  mysterious.  "  Our 
Mutual  Friend ''  was  finished,  but  If  only  half 
of  it  were  readable,  I  think  any  one  could  see  that 
John  Rokesmlth  was  John  Harman.  *'  Bleak 
House  "  Is  finished,  but  If  It  were  only  half  fin- 
ished I  think  any  one  would  guess  that  Lady  Dead- 
lock and  Nemo  had  sinned  in  the  past.     "  Edwin 

239 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

Drood  "  is  not  finished;  for  In  the  very  middle  of 
It  Dickens  died. 

He  had  altogether  overstrained  himself  In  a 
last  lecturing  tour  In  America.  He  was  a  man  In 
whom  any  serious  malady  would  naturally  make 
very  rapid  strides;  for  he  had  the  temper  of  an 
irrational  invalid.  I  have  said  before  that  there 
was  In  his  curious  character  something  that  was 
feminine.  Certainly  there  was  nothing  more  en- 
tirely feminine  than  this,  that  he  worked  because 
he  was  tired.  Fatigue  bred  In  him  a  false  and 
feverish  Industry,  and  his  case  Increased,  like  the 
case  of  a  man  who  drinks  to  cure  the  effects  of 
drink.  He  died  in  1870;  and  the  whole  nation 
mourned  him  as  no  public  man  has  ever  been 
mourned;  for  prime  ministers  and  princes  were 
private  persons  compared  with  Dickens.  He  had 
been  a  great  popular  king,  like  a  king  of  some 
more  primal  age  whom  his  people  could  come  and 
see,  giving  judgment  under  an  oak  tree.  He  had 
In  essence  held  great  audiences  of  millions,  and 
made  proclamations  to  more  than  one  of  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth.  His  obvious  omnipresence  In 
every  part  of  public  life  was  like  the  omnipresence 
of  the  sovereign.  His  secret  omnipresence  In 
every  house  and  hut  of  private  life  was  more  like 
the  omnipresence  of  a  deity.     Compared  with  that 

240 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

popular  leadership  all  the  fusses  of  the  last  forty 
years  are  diversions  In  Idleness.  Compared  with 
such  a  case  as  his  it  may  be  said  that  we  play 
with  our  politicians,  and  manage  to  endure  our 
authors.  We  shall  never  have  again  such  a  popu- 
larity until  we  have  again  a  people. 

He  left  behind  him  this  almost  sombre  frag- 
ment, "  The  Mystery  of  Edwin  Drood."  As  one 
turns  It  over  the  tragic  element  of  its  truncation 
mingles  somewhat  with  an  element  of  tragedy  In 
the  thing  Itself;  the  passionate  and  predestined 
Landless,  or  the  half  maniacal  Jasper  carving 
devils  out  of  his  own  heart.  The  workmanship 
of  It  Is  very  fine;  the  right  hand  has  not  only  not 
lost,  but  Is  still  gaining  its  cunning.  But  as  we 
turn  the  now  enigmatic  pages  the  thought  creeps 
into  us  again  which  I  have  suggested  earlier,  and 
which  Is  never  far  off  the  mind  of  a  true  lover  of 
Dickens.  Had  he  lost  or  gained  by  the  growth  of 
technique  and  probability  In  his  later  work?  His 
later  characters  were  more  like  men;  but  were  not 
his  earlier  characters  more  like  Immortals?  He 
has  become  able  to  perform  a  social  scene  so  that 
it  IS  possible  at  any  rate;  but  where  is  that  Dickens 
w^ho  once  performed  the  Impossible?  Where  Is 
that  young  poet  who  created  such  majors  and 
architects  as  nature  will  never  dare   to  create? 

241 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

Dickens  learnt  to  describe  daily  life  as  Thackeray 
and  Jane  Austen  could  describe  it;  but  Thackeray 
could  not  have  thought  such  a  thought  as  Crum- 
mies; and  it  is  painful  to  think  of  Miss  Austen 
attempting  to  imagine  Mantalini.  After  all,  we 
feel  there  are  many  able  novelists;  but  there  is 
only  one  Dickens,  and  whither  has  he  fled? 

He  was  alive  to  the  end.  And  in  this  last  dark 
and  secretive  story  of  Edwin  Drood  he  makes 
one  splendid  and  staggering  appearance,  like  a 
magician  saying  farewell  to  mankind.  In  the  cen- 
tre of  this  otherwise  reasonable  and  rather  melan- 
choly book,  this  grey  story  of  a  good  clergyman 
and  the  quiet  Cloisterham  Towers,  Dickens  has 
calmly  inserted  one  entirely  delightful  and  entirely 
insane  passage.  I  mean  the  frantic  and  incon- 
ceivable epitaph  of  Mrs.  Sapsea,  that  which  de- 
scribes her  as  "  the  reverential  wife  "  of  Thomas 
Sapsea,  speaks  of  her  consistency  in  "  Looking  up 
to  him,"  and  ends  with  the  words,  spaced  out  so 
admirably  on  the  tombstone,  "  Stranger  pause. 
And  ask  thyself  this  question,  Canst  thou  do  like- 
wise? If  not,  with  a  blush  retire."  Not  the  wild- 
est tale  In  Pickwick  contains  such  an  Impossibility 
as  that;  Dickens  dare  scarcely  have  Introduced  It, 
even  as  one  of  Jingle's  lies.  In  no  human  church- 
yard will  you  find  that  Invaluable  tombstone;  In- 

242 


LATER    LIFE    AND    WORKS 

deed,  you  could  scarcely  find  it  in  any  world  where 
there  are  churchyards.  You  could  scarcely  have 
such  Immortal  folly  as  that  in  a  world  where  there 
is  also  death.  Mr.  Sapsea  is  one  of  the  golden 
things  stored  up  for  us  In  a  better  world. 

Yes,  there  were  many  other  DIckenses :  a  clever 
Dickens,  an  Industrious  Dickens,  a  public-spirited 
Dickens;  but  this  was  the  great  one.  This  last 
outbreak  of  Insane  humour  reminds  us  wherein 
lay  his  power  and  his  supremacy.  The  praise  of 
such  beatific  buffoonery  should  be  the  final  praise, 
the  ultimate  word  in  his  honour.  The  wild  epi- 
taph of  Mrs.  Sapsea  should  be  the  serious  epitaph 
of  Dickens. 


243' 


CHAPTER    X 

THE  GREAT  DICKENS   CHARACTERS 

All  criticism  tends  too  much  to  become  criticism 
of  criticism ;  and  the  reason  Is  very  evident.  It  Is 
that  criticism  of  creation  Is  so  very  staggering  a 
thing.  We  see  this  In  the  difficulty  of  criticizing 
any  artistic  creation.  We  see  it  again  In  the  diffi- 
culty of  criticizing  that  creation  which  Is  spelt  with 
a  capital  C.  The  pessimists  who  attack  the  Uni- 
verse are  always  under  this  disadvantage.  They 
have  an  exhilarating  consciousness  that  they  could 
make  the  sun  and  moon  better;  but  they  also  have 
the  depressing  consciousness  that  they  could  not 
make  the  sun  and  moon  at  all.  A  man  looking  at 
a  hippopotamus  may  sometimes  be  tempted  to  re- 
gard a  hippopotamus  as  an  enormous  mistake;  but 
he  Is  also  bound  to  confess  that  a  fortunate  Infe- 
riority prevents  him  personally  from  making  such 
mistakes.  It  Is  neither  a  blasphemy  nor  an  exag- 
geration to  say  that  we  feel  something  of  the  same 
difficulty  In  judging  of  the  very  creative  element 
in  human  literature.  And  this  Is  the  first  and  last 
dignity  of  Dickens;  that  he  was  a  creator.     He 

244 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

did  not  point  out  things,  he  made  them.  We  may 
disapprove  of  Mr.  Guppy,  but  we  recognize  him 
as  a  creation  flung  down  like  a  miracle  out  of  an 
upper  sphere;  we  can  pull  him  to  pieces,  but  we 
could  not  have  put  him  together.  We  can  destroy 
Mrs.  Gamp  in  our  wrath,  but  we  could  not  have 
made  her  m  our  joy.  Under  this  disadvantage 
any  book  about  Dickens  must  definitely  labour. 
Real  primary  creation  (such  as  the  sun  or  the  birth 
of  a  child)  calls  forth  not  criticism,  not  apprecia- 
tion, but  a  kind  of  incoherent  gratitude.  This  is 
why  most  hymns  about  God  are  bad;  and  this  is 
why  most  eulogies  on  Dickens  are  bad.  The  eulo- 
gists of  the  divine  and  of  the  human  creator  are 
alike  inclined  to  appear  sentimentalists  because 
they  are  talking  about  something  so  very  real.  In 
the  same  way  love-letters  always  sound  florid  and 
artificial  because  they  are  about  something  real. 

Any  chapter  such  as  this  chapter  must  therefore 
In  a  sense  be  inadequate.  There  Is  no  way  of  deal- 
ing properly  with  the  ultimate  greatness  of  Dick- 
ens, except  by  offering  sacrifice  to  him  as  a  god; 
and  this  Is  opposed  to  the  etiquette  of  our  time. 
But  something  can  perhaps  be  done  in  the  way  of 
suggesting  what  was  the  quality  of  this  creation. 
But  even  in  considering  its  quality  we  ought  to  re- 
member that  quality  Is  not  the  whole  question.    One 

245 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

of  the  godlike  things  about  Dickens  Is  his  quantity, 
his  quantity  as  such,  the  enormous  output,  the  In- 
credible fecundity  of  his  Invention.  I  have  said 
a  moment  ago  that  not  one  of  us  could  have  In- 
vented Mr.  Guppy.  But  even  If  we  could  have 
stolen  Mr.  Guppy  from  Dickens  we  have  still  to 
confront  the  fact  that  Dickens  would  have  been 
able  to  Invent  another  quite  Inconceivable  character 
to  take  his  place.  Perhaps  we  could  have  created 
Mr.  Guppy;  but  the  effort  would  certainly  have 
exhausted  us;  we  should  be  ever  afterwards 
wheeled  about  In  a  bath-chair  at  Bournemouth. 

Nevertheless  there  Is  something  that  is  worth 
saying  about  the  quality  of  Dickens.  At  the  very 
beginning  of  this  review  I  remarked  that  the 
reader  must  be  In  a  mood,  at  least,  of  democracy. 
To  some  It  may  have  sounded  Irrelevant;  but  the 
Revolution  was  as  much  behind  all  the  books  of 
the  nineteenth  century  as  the  Catholic  religion 
(let  us  say)  was  behind  all  the  colours  and  carving 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  Another  great  name  of  the 
nineteenth  century  will  afford  an  evidence  of  this; 
and  will  also  bring  us  most  sharply  to  the  problem 
of  the  literary  quality  of  Dickens. 

Of  all  these  nineteenth  century  writers  there 
Is  none,  In  the  noblest  sense,  more  democratic  than 
Walter  Scott.     As  this  may  be  disputed,  and  as 

246 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

it  Is  relevant,  I  will  expand  the  remark.  There 
are  two  rooted  spiritual  realities  out  of  which  grow 
all  kinds  of  democratic  conception  or  sentiment  of 
human  equality.  There  are  two  things  in  which 
all  men  are  manifestly  unmistakably  equal.  They 
are  not  equally  clever  or  equally  muscular  or 
equally  fat,  as  the  sages  of  the  modern  reaction 
(with  piercing  Insight)    perceive.     But  this  Is  a 

spiritual  certainty,  that  all  men  are  tragic. And 

this  again,  Is  an  equally  sublime  spiritual  certainty, 
that  all  men  are  comic.     No  special  and  private 
sorrow  can  be  so  "dreadful  as  the  fact  of  having 
to  die.     And  no  freak  or  deformity  can  be  so     I 
funny  as  the  mere  fact  of  having  two  legs.    Every     . 
man  is  Important  if  he  loses  his  life;  and  every 
man  is  funny  if  he  loses  his  hat,  and  has  to  run 
after  It.     And  the  universal  test  everywhere  of 
whether   a   thing   Is   popular,    of  the   people,   is 
whether  it  employs  vigorously  these  extremes  of  | 
the  tragic  and  the  comic.     Shelley,  for  instance,  ^ 
was  an  aristocrat.  If  ever  there  was  one  In  this 
world.     He  was  a  Republican,  but  he  was  not  a 
democrat :  in  his  poetry  there  is  every  perfect  qual- 
ity except  this  pungent  and  popular  stab.     For  the 
tragic  and  the  comic  you  must  go,  say,  to  Burns, 
a  poor  man.     And  all  over  the  world,  the  folk 
literature,  the  popular  literature,  is  the  same.     It 

247 


i 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

consists  of  very  dignified  sorrow  and  very  undigni- 
fied fun.  Its  sad  tales  are  of  broken  hearts;  its 
happy  tales  are  of  broken  heads. 

These,  I  say,  are  two  roots  of  democratic  real- 
ity. But  they  have  In  more  civilized  literature,  a 
more  civilized  embodiment  or  form.  In  literature 
such  as  that  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  two  ele- 
ments appear  somewhat  thus.  Tragedy  becomes 
a  profound  sense  of  human  dignity.  The  other 
and  jollier  element  becomes  a  delighted  sense  of 
';  human  variety.  The  first  supports  equality  by 
,  saying  that  all  men  are  equally  sublime.  The  sec- 
ond supports  equality  by  observing  that  all  men 
are  equally  Interesting. 

In  this  democratic  aspect  the  interest  and  va- 
riety of  all  men,  there  is,  of  course,  no  democrat 
so  great  as  Dickens.  But  In  the  other  matter,  in 
the  Idea  of  the  dignity  of  all  men,  I  repeat  that 
there  is  no  democrat  so  great  as  Scott.  This  fact, 
which  is  the  moral  and  enduring  magnificence  of 
Scott,  has  been  astonishingly  overlooked.  His  rich 
and  dramatic  effects  are  gained  in  almost  every 
case  by  some  grotesque  or  beggarly  figure  rising 
into  a  human  pride  and  rhetoric.  The  common 
man,  in  the  sense  of  the  paltry  man,  becomes  the 
common  man  in  the  sense  of  the  universal  man. 
He  declares  his  humanity.     For  the  meanest  of 

248 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

all  the  modernities  has  been  the  notion  that  the 
heroic  Is  an  oddity  or  variation,  and  that  the 
things  that  unite  us  are  merely  flat  or  foul.  The 
common  things  are  terrible  and  startling,  death,  ' 
for  Instance,  and  first  love:  the  things  that  are 
common  are  the  things  that  are  not  commonplace. 
Into  such  high  and  central  passions  the  comic  Scott 
character  will  suddenly  rise.  Remember  the  firm 
and  almost  stately  answer  of  the  preposterous 
NIcol  Jarvie  when  Helen  Macgregor  seeks  to 
browbeat  him  Into  condoning  lawlessness  and 
breaking  his  bourgeois  decency.  That  speech  Is 
a  great  monument  of  the  middle  class.  Mollere 
made  M.  Jourdain  talk  prose;  but  Scott  made  him 
talk  poetry.  Think  of  the  rising  and  rousing 
voice  of  the  dull  and  gluttonous  Athelstane  when 
he  answers  and  overwhelms  De  Bracy.  Think  of 
the  proud  appeal  of  the  old  beggar  In  the  ^H^ntl- 
quary  "  when  he  rebukes  the  duellists.  Scott  was 
fond  of  describing  kings  In  disguise.  But  all  his 
characters  are  kings  In  disguise.  He  was,  with 
all  his  errors,  profoundly  possessed  with  the  old 
religious  conception  (the  only  possible  democratic  | 
basis),  the  Idea  that  man  himself  Is  a  king  in  B 
disguise. 

In  all  this  Scott,  though  a  Royalist  and  a  Tory, 
had  In  the  strangest  way  the  heart  of  the  Revolu- 

249 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

tion.  For  instance,  he  regarded  rhetoric,  the  art 
of  the  orator,  as  the  Immediate  weapon  of  the 
oppressed.  All  his  poor  men  make  grand  speeches, 
as  they  did  in  the  Jacobin  Club,  which  Scott  would 
have  so  much  detested.  And  It  Is  odd  to  reflect 
that  he  was,  as  an  author,  giving  free  speech  to 
fictitious  rebels  while  he  was,  as  a  stupid  politician, 
denying  it  to  real  ones.  But  the  point  for  us  here 
is  this:  that  all  this  popular  sympathy  of  his  rests 
on  the  graver  basis,  on  the  dark  dignity  of  man. 
"  Can  you  find  no  way?  "  asks  Sir  Arthur  War- 
dour  of  the  beggar  when  they  are  cut  off  by  the 
tide.  "  I'll  give  you  a  farm  .  .  .  Fll  make 
you  rich."  ..."  Our  riches  will  soon  be 
equal,"  says  the  beggar,  and  looks  out  across  the 
advancing  sea. 

Now,  I  have  dwelt  on  this  strong  point  of  Scott 
because  it  Is  the  best  Illustration  of  the  one  weak 
point  of  Dickens.  Dickens  had  little  or  none  of 
this  sense  of  the  concealed  sublimity  of  every  sepa- 
rate man.  Dickens's  sense  of  democracy  was 
entirely  of  the  other  kind;  It  rested  on  the  other 
of  the  two  supports  of  which  I  have  spoken.  It 
rested  on  the  sense  that  all  men  were  wildly  Inter- 
esting and  wildly  varied.  When  a  Dickens  char- 
acter becomes  excited  he  becomes  more  and  more 
himself.    He  does  not,  like  the  Scott  beggar,  turn 

250 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

more  and  more  Into  man.  As  he  rises  he  grows 
more  and  more  into  a  gargoyle  or  grotesque.  He 
does  not,  like  the  fine  speaker  In  Scott,  grow  more 
classical  as  he  grows  more  passionate,  more  uni- 
versal as  he  grows  more  Intense.  The  thing  can 
only  be  illustrated  by  a  special  case.  Dickens  did 
more  than  once,  of  course,  make  one  of  his  quaint 
or  humble  characters  assert  himself  in  a  serious 
crisis  or  defy  the  powerful.  There  is,  for  instance, 
the  quite  admirable  scene  in  which  Susan  Nipper 
(one  of  the  greatest  of  Dickens's  achievements) 
faces  and  rebukes  Mr.  Dombey.  But  It  is  still  true 
(and  quite  appropriate  in  its  own  place  and  man- 
ner) that  Susan  Nipper  remains  a  purely  comic 
character  throughout  her  speech,  and  even  grows 
more  comic  as  she  goes  on.  She  is  more  serious 
than  usual  in  her  meaning,  but  not  more  serious 
in  her  style.  Dickens  keeps  the  natural  diction 
of  Nipper,  but  makes  her  grow  more  NIpperlsh 
as  she  grows  more  warm.  But  Scott  keeps  the 
natural  diction  of  Bailie  Jarvie,  but  insensibly 
sobers  and  uplifts  that  style  until  it  reaches  a  plain 
and  appropriate  eloquence.  This  plain  and  ap- 
propriate eloquence  was  (except  In  a  few  places 
at  the  end  of  "  Pickwick '')  almost  unknown  to 
Dickens.  Whenever  he  made  comic  characters 
talk  sentiment  comically,   as  in  the   Instance   of 

251 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

Susan,  It  was  a  success,  but  an  avowedly  extrava- 
gant success.  Whenever  he  made  comic  characters 
talk  sentiment  seriously  It  was  an  extravagant  fail- 
ure. Humour  was  his  medium;  his  only  way  of 
approaching  emotion.  Wherever  you  do  not  get 
humour,  you  get  unconscious  humour. 

As  I  have  said  elsewhere  In  this  book  Dickens 
was  deeply  and  radically  English;  the  most  Eng- 
lish of  our  great  writers.  And  there  Is  something 
very  English  In  this  contentment  with  a  grotesque 
democracy;  and  In  this  absence  of  the  eloquence 
and  elevation  of  Scott.  The  English  democracy 
Is  the  most  humorous  democracy  In  the  world. 
The  Scotch  democracy  Is  the  most  dignified,  while 
the  whole  abandon  and  satiric  genius  of  the  Eng- 
lish populace  come  from  Its  being  quite  undigni- 
fied In  every  way.  A  comparison  of  the  two  types 
might  be  found,  for  Instance,  by  putting  a  Scotch 
Labour  leader  like  Mr.  Keir  Hardle  alongside  an 
English  Labour  leader  like  Mr.  Will  Crooks. 
Both  are  good  men,  honest  and  responsible  and 
compassionate;  but  we  can  feel  that  the  Scotch- 
man carries  himself  seriously  and  universally,  the 
Englishman  personally  and  with  an  obstinate  hu- 
mour. Mr.  Hardle  wishes  to  hold  up  his  head 
as  Man,  Mr.  Crooks  wishes  to  follow  his  nose 
as  Crooks.     Mr.  KeIr  Hardle  Is  very  like  a  poor 

252 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

man  in  Walter  Scott.    Mr.  Crooks  is  very  like  a 
poor  man  in  Dickens. 

Dickens  then  had  this  English  feeling  of  a 
grotesque  democracy.  By  that  is  more  properly 
meant  a  vastly  varying  democracy.  The  intoxiA 
eating  variety  of  men — that  was  his  vision  and| 
conception  of  human  brotherhood.  And  certainly 
it  is  a  great  part  of  human  brotherhood.  In  one 
sense  things  can  only  be  equal  if  they  are  entirely 
different.  Thus,  for  instance,  people  talk  with  a 
quite  astonishing  gravity  about  the  inequality  or 
equality  of  the  sexes;  as  if  there  could  possibly 
be  any  inequality  between  a  lock  and  a  key. 
Wherever  there  is  no  element  of  variety,  wherever 
all  the  items  literally  have  an  identical  aim,  there 
Is  at  once  and  of  necessity  inequality.  A  woman 
is  only  inferior  to  man  in  the  matter  of  being  not 
so  manly;  she  is  inferior  In  nothing  else.  Man  is 
inferior  to  woman  in  so  far  as  he  is  not  a  woman; 
there  is  no  other  reason.  And  the  same  applies 
In  some  degree  to  all  genuine  differences.  It  is  a 
great  mistake  to  suppose  that  love  unites  and  uni- 
fies men.  Love  diversifies  them,  because  love  Is 
directed  towards  individuality.  The  thing  that 
really  unites  men  and  makes  them  like  to  each 
other  is  hatred.  Thus,  for  Instance,  the  more  we 
love  Germany  the  more  pleased  we  shall  be  that 

253 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

Germany  should  be  something  different  from  our- 
selves, should  keep  her  own  ritual  and  convivial- 
ity and  we  ours.  But  the  more  we  hate  Germany 
the  more  we  shall  copy  German  guns  and  German 
fortifications  in  order  to  be  armed  against  Ger- 
many. The  more  modern  nations  detest  each 
other  the  more  meekly  they  follow  each  other; 
for  all  competition  is  in  its  nature  only  a  furious 
plagiarism.  As  competition  means  always  similar- 
ity, it  is  equally  true  that  similarity  always  means 
inequality.  If  everything  is  trying  to  be  green, 
some  things  will  be  greener  than  others ;  but  there 
is  an  immortal  and  Indestructible  equality  between 
green  and  red.  Something  of  the  same  kind  of 
irrefutable  equality  exists  between  the  violent  and 
varying  creations  of  such  a  writer  as  Dickens. 
They  are  all  equally  ecstatic  fulfilments  of  a  sepa- 
rate line  of  development.  It  would  be  hard  to  say 
that  there  could  be  any  comparison  or  inequality, 
let  us  say  between  Mr.  Sapsea  and  Mr.  Elijah 
Pogram.  They  are  both  in  the  same  difficulty ;  they 
can  neither  of  them  contrive  to  exist  in  this  world; 
they  are  both  too  big  for  the  gate  of  birth. 

Of  the  high  virtue  of  this  variation  I  shall  speak 
more  adequately  in  a  moment;  but  certainly  this 
love  of  mere  variation  (which  I  have  contrasted 
with  the  classicism  of  Scott)  is  the  only  intelligent 

254 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

statement  of  the  common  case  against  the  exag- 
geration of  Dickens.  This  is  the  meaning,  tht 
only  sane  or  endurable  meaning,  which  people  have 
In  their  minds  when  they  say  that  Dickens  Is  a 
mere  caricaturist.  They  do  not  mean  merely  that 
Uncle  Pumblechook  does  not  exist.  A  fictitious 
character  ought  not  to  be  a  person  who  exists; 
he  ought  to  be  an  entirely  new  combination,  an 
addition  to  the  creatures  already  existing  on  the 
earth.  They  do  not  mean  that  Uncle  Pumble- 
chook could  not  exist;  for  on  that  obviously  they 
can  have  no  knowledge  whatever.  They  do  not 
mean  that  Uncle  Pumblechook's  utterances  are 
selected  and  arranged  so  as  to  bring  out  his  es- 
sential Pumblechookery ;  to  say  that  Is  simply  to 
say  that  he  occurs  in  a  work  of  art.  But  what  they 
do  really  mean  Is  this,  and  there  Is  an  element  of 
truth  In  It.  They  mean  that  Dickens  nowhere 
makes  the  reader  feel  that  Pumblechook  has  any 
kind  of  fundamental  human  dignity  at  all.  It  is 
nowhere  suggested  that  Pumblechook  will  some 
day  die.  He  Is  felt  rather  as  one  of  the  Idle  and 
evil  fairies,  who  are  Innocuous  and  yet  malignant, 
and  who  live  for  ever  because  they  never  really 
live  at  all.  This  dehurnanized  vitality,  this  fan- 
tasy, this  irresponsibility  of  creation,  does  In  some 
sense  truly  belong  to  Dickens.    It  Is  the  lower  side 

^55 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

of  his  hilarious  human  variety.  But  now  we  come 
to  the  higher  side  of  his  human  variety,  and  it  is 
far  more  difficult  to  state. 

Mr.  George  Gissing,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  passing  intellectualism  of  our  day,  has  made 
(among  his  many  wise  tributes  to  Dickens)  a 
characteristic  complaint  about  him.  He  has  said 
that  Dickens,  with  all  his  undoubted  sympathy  for 
the  lower  classes,  never  made  a  working  man,  a 
poor  man,  specifically  and  highly  Intellectual.  An 
exception  does  exist,  which  he  must  at  least  have 
realized — a  wit,  a  diplomatist,  a  great  philoso- 
pher. I  mean,  of  course,  Mr.  Weller.  Broadly, 
however,  the  accusation  has  a  truth,  though  It  Is 
a  truth  that  Mr.  Gissing  did  not  grasp  In  Its  en- 
tirety. It  Is  not  only  true  that  Dickens  seldom 
made  a  poor  character  what  we  call  Intellectual; 
it  Is  also  true  that  he  seldom  made  any  character 
what  we  call  Intellectual.  Intellectualism  was  not 
at  all  present  to  his  Imagination.  What  was  pres- 
ent to  his  Imagination  was  character — a  thing 
which  Is  not  only  more  Important  than  Intellect, 
but  Is  also  much  more  entertaining.  When  some 
English  moralists  write  about  the  importance  of 
having  character,  they  appear  to  mean  only  the 
Importance  of  having  a  dull  character.  But  char- 
acter is  brighter  than  wit,  and  much  more  complex 

256 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

than  sophistry.  The  whole  superiority  of  the 
democracy  of  Dickens  over  the  democracy  of  such 
a  man  as  GIssIng  Hes  exactly  In  the  fact  that  GIss- 
ing  would  have  liked  to  prove  that  poor  men  could 
Instruct  themselves  and  could  Instruct  others.  It 
was^of  final  Importance  to  Dickens  that  poor  men 
could  amuse  themselves  and  could  amuse  him.  He  '^^ 
troubled  little  about  the  mere  education  of  that 
life;  he  declared  two  essential  things  about  It — 
that  it  was  laughable,  and  that  it  was  livable.  The  ' 
humble  characters  of  Dickens  do  not  amuse  each 
j  other  with  epigrams;  they  amuse  each  other  with 
themselves.  The  present  that  each  man  brings 
In  hand  Is  his  own  Incredible  personality.  In  the 
most  sacred  sense,  and  In  the  most  literal  sense 
of  the  phrase,  he  '*  gives  himself  away."  Now, 
the  man  who  gives  himself  away  does  the  last  act 
of  generosity;  he  is  like  a  martyr,  a  lover,  or  a 
monk.  But  he  Is  also  almost  certainly  what  we 
commonly  call  a  fool. 

The  key  of  the  great  characters  of  Dickens  is 
that  they  are  all  great  fools.  There  is  the  same 
difference  between  a  great  fool  and  a  small  fool 
as  there  is  between  a  great  poet  and  a  small  poet. 
The  great  fool  Is  a  being  who  is  above  wisdom 
rather  than  below  It.  That  element  of  greatness 
of  which  I  spoke  at  the  beginning  of  this  book  Is 

257 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

nowhere  more  clearly  Indicated  than  In  such  char- 
acters. A  man  can  be  entirely  great  while  he  Is 
entirely  foolish.  We  see  this  in  the  epic  heroes, 
such  as  Achilles.  Nay,  a  man  can  be  entirely  great 
because  he  Is  entirely  foolish.  We  see  this  in  all 
the  great  comic  characters  of  all  the  great  comic 
writers  of  whom  Dickens  was  the  last.  Bottom 
the  Weaver  is  great  because  he  Is  foolish;  Mr. 
Toots  Is  great  because  he  Is  foolish.  The  thing 
I  mean  can  be  observed,  for  Instance,  in  innumera- 
ble actual  characters.  Which  of  us  has  not  known, 
for  instance,  a  great  rustic? — a  character  so  in- 
curably characteristic  that  he  seemed  to  break 
through  all  canons  about  cleverness  or  stupidity; 
we  do  not  know  whether  he  Is  an  enormous  idiot 
or  an  enormous  philosopher;  we  know  only  that 
he  is  enormous,  like  a  hill.  These  great,  grotesque 
characters  are  almost  entirely  to  be  found  where 
Dickens  found  them — among  the  poorer  classes. 
The  gentry  only  attain  this  greatness  by  going 
slightly  mad.  But  who  has  not  known  an  un- 
fathomably  personal  old  nurse?  Who  has  not 
known  an  abysmal  butler?  The  truth  is  that  our 
public  life  consists  almost  exclusively  of  small  men. 
Our  public  men  are  small  because  they  have  to 
prove  that  they  are  in  the  common-place  interpre- 
tation clever,  because  they  have  to  pass  examina- 

258 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

tlons,  to  learn  codes  of  manners,  to  Imitate  a  fixed 
type.  It  Is  In  private  life  that  we  find  the  great 
characters.  They  are  too  great  to  get  Into  the  jjP' 
public  world.  It  Is  easier  for  a  camel  to  pass  '',l' 
through  the  eye  of  a  needle  than  for  a  great  man  '^ '' 
to  enter  Into  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth.  The 
truly  great  and  gorgeous  personality,  he  who  talks 
as  no  one  else  could  talk  and  feels  with  an  ele- 
mentary fire,  you  will  never  find  this  man  on  any 
cabinet  bench,  In  any  literary  circle,  at  any  society 
dinner.  Least  of  all  will  you  find  him  In  artistic 
society;  he  is  utterly  unknown  in  Bohemia.  He 
Is  more  than  clever,  he  is  amusing.  He  is  more 
than  successful,  he  is  alive.  You  will  find  him 
stranded  here  and  there  in  all  sorts  of  unknown 
positions,  almost  always  in  unsuccessful  positions,  ^l*^ 
You  will  find  him  adrift  as  an  Impecunious  com-  ■^^ 
mercial  traveller  like  Micawber.  You  will  find 
him  but  one  of  a  batch  of  silly  clerks,  like  Swlv- 
eller.  You  will  find  him  as  an  unsuccessful  actor, 
like  Crummies.  You  will  find  him  as  an  unsuccess- 
ful doctor,  like  Sawyer.  But  you  will  always 
find  this  rich  and  reeking  personality  where  Dick- 
ens found  it — among  the  poor.  For  the  glory  of 
this  world  is  a  very  small  and  priggish  affair,  and 
these  men  are  too  large  to  get  In  line  with  it. 
They  are  too  strong  to  conquer. 

259 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

It  IS  impossible  to  do  justice  to  these  figures 
because  the  essential  of  them  is  their  multiplicity. 
The  whole  point  of  Dickens  is  that  he  not  only 
made  them,  but  made  them  by  myriads ;  that  ,he 
stamped  his  foot,  and  armies  came  out  of  the 
earth.  But  let  us,  for  the  sake  of  showing  the  true 
Dickens  method,  take  one  of  them,  a  very  sub- 
lime one,  Toots.  It  affords  a  good  example  of 
the  real  work  of  Dickens,  which  was  the  revealing 
of  a  certain  grotesque  greatness  inside  an  obscure 
and  even  unattractive  type.  It  reveals  the  great 
1  paradox  of  all  spiritual  things;  that  the  inside  is 
always  larger  than  the  outside. 

Toots  is  a  type  that  we  all  know  as  well  as  we 
know  chimney-pots.  And  of  all  conceivable  human 
figures  he  is  apparently  the  most  futile  and  the 
most  dull.  He  is  the  blockhead  who  hangs  on  at  a 
private  school,  overgrown  and  underdeveloped. 
He  is  always  backward  in  his  lessons,  but  forward 
in  certain  cheap  ways  of  the  world;  he  can  smoke 
before  he  can  spell.  Toots  is  a  perfect  and  pun- 
gent picture  of  the  wretched  youth.  Toots  has,  as 
this  youth  always  has,  a  little  money  of  his  own; 
enough  to  waste  in  a  semi-dissipation,  he  does  not 
enjoy,  and  in  a  gaping  regard  for  sports,  in  which 
he  could  not  possibly  excel.  Toots  has,  as  this 
youth  always  has,  bits  of  surreptitious  finery,  in 

260 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

his  case  the  Incomparable  ring.  In  Toots,  above 
all,  Is  exactly  rendered  the  central  and  most  start- 
ling contradiction;  the  contrast  between  a  jauntl- 
ness  and  a  certain  Impudence  of  the  attire,  with  the 
profound  shame  and  sheeplshness  of  the  visage  and 
the  character.  In  him,  too,  Is  expressed  the  larger 
contrasts  between  the  external  gaiety  of  such  a 
lad's  occupations,  and  the  Infinite,  disconsolate  sad- 
ness of  his  empty  eyes.  This  Is  Toots;  we  know 
him,  we  pity  him,  and  we  avoid  him.  School- 
masters deal  with  him  In  despair  or  In  a  heart- 
breaking patience.  His  family  Is  vague  about 
him.  His  low-class  hangers-on  (like  the  Game 
Chicken)  lead  him  by  the  nose.  The  very  para- 
sites that  live  on  him  despise  him.  But  Dickens 
does  not  despise  him.  Without  denying  one  of 
the  dreary  details  which  make  us  avoid  the  man, 
Dickens  makes  him  a  man  whom  we  long  to  meet. 
He  does  not  gloss  over  one  of  his  dismal  defi- 
ciencies, but  he  makes  them  seem  suddenly  like 
violent  virtues  that  we  would  go  to  the  world's 
end  to  see.  Without  altering  one  fact  he  man- 
ages to  alter  the  whole  atmosphere,  the  whole 
universe  of  Toots.  He  makes  us  not  only  like, 
but  love;  not  only  love,  but  reverence  this  little 
dunce  and  cad.  The  power  to  do  this  Is  a  power 
truly  and  literally  to  be  called  divine. 

261 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

For  this  Is  the  very  wholesome  point.  Dickens 
does  not  alter  Toots  In  any  vital  point.  The  thing 
he  does  alter  is  us.  He  makes  us  lively  where  we 
were  bored,  kind  where  we  were  cruel,  and  above 
all,  free  for  an  universal  human  laughter  where 
we  were  cramped  in  a  small  competition  about  that 
sad  and  solemn  thing,  the  Intellect.  His  enthusi- 
asm fills  us,  as  does  the  love  of  God,  with  a 
glorious  shame;  after  all,  he  has  only  found  in 
Toots  what  we  might  have  found  for  ourselves. 
He  has  only  made  us  as  much  interested  In  Toots 
as  Toots  Is  In  himself.  He  does  not  alter  the  pro- 
portions of  Toots;  he  alters  only  the  scale;  we 
seem  as  If  we  were  staring  at  a  rat  risen  to  the 
stature  of  an  elephant.  Hitherto  we  have  passed 
him  by;  now  we  feel  that  nothing  could  Induce  us 
to  pass  him  by;  that  Is  the  nearest  way  of  putting 
e  truth.  He  has  not  been  whitewashed  In  the 
j [feast;  he  has  not  been  depicted  as  any  cleverer 
than  he  Is.  He  has  been  turned  from  a  small  fool 
Into  a  great  fool.  We  know  Toots  is  not  clever; 
but  we  are  not  Inclined  to  quarrel  with  Toots  be- 
cause he  Is  not  clever.  We  are  more  likely  to 
quarrel  with  cleverness  because  It  Is  not  Toots. 
All  the  examinations  he  could  not  pass,  all  the 
schools  he  could  not  enter,  all  the  temporary 
tests    of    brain    and    culture    which    surrounded 

262 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

him   shall  pass,   and  Toots  shall  remain  like   a 
mountain. 

It  may  be  noticed  that  the  great  artists  always 
choose  great  fools  rather  than  great  Intellectuals 
to  embody  humanity.  Hamlet  does  express  the 
aesthetic  dreams  and  the  bewilderments  of  the  In- 
tellect; but  Bottom  the  Weaver  expresses  them 
much  better.  In  the  same  manner  Toots  expresses 
certain  permanent  dignities  In  human  nature  more 
than  any  of  Dickens's  more  dignified  characters 
can  do  It.  For  Instance,  Toots  expresses  admira- 
bly the  enduring  fear,  which  Is  the  very  essence  of 
falling  In  love.  When  Toots  Is  Invited  by  Flor- 
ence to  come  In,  when  he  longs  to  come  In,  but  still 
stays  out,  he  Is  embodying  a  sort  of  Insane  and 
perverse  humility  which  is  elementary  In  the  lover. 

There  Is  an  apostolic  injunction  to  suffer  fools 
gladly.  We  always  lay  the  stress  on  the  word 
suffer,  and  interpret  the  passage  as  one  urging 
resignation.  It  might  be  better,  perhaps,  to  lay 
the  stress  upon  the  word  gladly,  and  make  our 
familiarity  with  fools  a  delight,  and  almost  a  dis- 
sipation. Nor  is  It  necessary  that  our  pleasure  in 
fools  (or  at  least  In  great  and  godlike  fools) 
should  be  merely  satiric  or  cruel.  The  great  fool 
Is  he  in  whom  we  cannot  tell  which  Is  the  conscious 
and  which  the  unconscious  humour;  we  laugh  with 

263 


.^ 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

him  and  laugh  at  him  at  the  same  time.  An  ob- 
vious Instance  Is  that  of  ordinary  and  happy  mar- 
riage. A  man  and  a  woman  cannot  hve  together 
without  having  against  each  other  a  kind  of  ever- 
lasting joke.  Each  has  discovered  that  the  other 
Is  a  fool,  but  a  great  fool.  This  largeness,  this 
grossness  and  gorgeousness  of  folly  is  the  thing 
which  we  all  find  about  those  with  whom  we  are 
In  Intimate  contact;  and  it  Is  the  one  enduring 
basis  of  affection,  and  even  of  respect.  When  w^e 
know  an  Individual  named  Tomkins,  w^e  know  that 
he  has  succeeded  where  all  others  have  failed;  he 
has  succeeded  in  being  Tomkins.  Just  so  Mr. 
Toots  succeeded;  he  was  defeated  in  all  scholastic 
examinations,  but  he  was  the  victor  in  that  vision- 
ary battle  in  which  unknown  competitors  vainly 
tried  to  be  Toots. 

If  we  are  to  look  for  lessons,  here  at  least  Is  the 
last  and  deepest  lesson  of  Dickens.  It  Is  in  our 
own  daily  life  that  we  are  to  look  for  the  portents 
and  the  prodigies.  This  is  the  truth,  not  merely 
of  the  fixed  figures  of  our  life;  the  wife,  the  hus- 
band, the  fool  that  fills  the  sky.  It  Is  true  of  the 
whole  stream  and  substance  of  our  daily  experi- 
ence; every  Instant  we  reject  a  great  fool  merely 
because  he  Is  foolish.  Every  day  we  neglect 
Tootses  and  Swivellers,  Guppys  and  Joblings,  Sim- 

264 


THE    GREAT    DICKENS    CHARACTERS 

merys  and  Flashers.  Every  day  we  lose  the  last 
sight  of  Jobling  and  Chuckster,  the  Analytical 
Chemist,  or  the  Marchioness.  Every  day  we  are 
missing  a  monster  whom  we  might  easily  love,  and 
an  imbecile  whom  we  should  certainly  admire. 
This  is  the  real  gospel  of  Dickens;  the  inexhausti- 
ble opportunities  offered  by  the  liberty  and  the 
variety  of  man.  Compared  with  this  life,  all 
public  life,  all  fame,  all  wisdom,  is  by  its  nature 
cramped  and  cold  and  small.  For  on  that  defined 
and  lighted  public  stage  men  are  of  necessity 
forced  to  profess  one  set  of  accomplishments,  to 
rise  to  one  rigid  standard.  It  is  the  utterly  un- 
known people,  who  can  grow  in  all  directions  like 
an  exuberant  tree.  It  Is  In  our  interior  lives  that 
we  find  that  people  are  too  much  themselves.  It 
is  In  our  private  life  that  we  find  people  intolerably 
Individual,  that  we  find  them  swelling  into  the 
enormous  contours,  and  taking  on  the  colours  of 
caricature.  Many  of  us  live  publicly  with  feature- 
less public  puppets,  Images  of  the  small  public 
abstractions.  It  Is  when  we  pass  our  own  private 
gate,  and  open  our  own  secret  door,  that  we  step 
Into  the  land  of  the  giants. 


265 


CHAPTER    XI 

ON   THE   ALLEGED   OPTIMISM   OF   DICKENS 

In  one  of  the  plays  of  the  decadent  period,  an 
Intellectual  expressed  the  atmosphere  of  his  epoch 
by  referring  to  Dickens  as  "  a  vulgar  optimist." 
I  have  in  a  previous  chapter  suggested  something 
of  the  real  strangeness  of  such  a  term.  After  all, 
the  main  matter  of  astonishment  (or  rather  of 
admiration)  is  that  optimism  should  be  vulgar. 
In  a  world  in  which  physical  distress  is  almost  the 
common  lot,  we  actually  complain  that  happiness 
is  too  common.  In  a  world  in  which  the  majority 
is  physically  miserable  we  actually  complain  of  the 
sameness  of  praise;  we  are  bored  with  the  abun- 
dance of  approval.  When  we  consider  what  the 
conditions  of  the  vulgar  really  are,  it  is  difficult  to 
imagine  a  stranger  or  more  splendid  tribute  to 
humanity  than  such  a  phrase  as  vulgar  optimism. 
It  is  as  if  one  spoke  of  "  vulgar  martyrdom  "  or 
''  common  crucifixion." 

First,  however,  let  it  be  said  frankly  that  there 
is  a  foundation  for  the  charge  against  Dickens 
which  is  imolled  in  the  phrase  about  vulgar  op- 

266 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

timism.  It  does  not  concern  Itself  with  Dickens's 
confidence  In  the  value  of  existence  and  the  in- 
trinsic victory  of  virtue;  that  is  not  optimism  but 
religion.  It  is  not  concerned  with  his  habit  of 
making  bright  occasions  bright,  and  happy  stories 
happy;  that  is  not  optimism,  but  literature.  Nor 
is  it  concerned  even  with  his  peculiar  genius  for 
the  description  of  an  almost  bloated  joviality;  that 
is  not  optimism,  it  is  simply  Dickens.  With  all 
these  higher  variations  of  optimism  I  deal  else- 
where. But  over  and  above  all  these  there  Is  a 
real  sense  In  which  Dickens  laid  himself  open  to 
the  accusation  of  vulgar  optimism,  and  I  desire 
to  put  the  admission  of  this  first,  before  the  dis- 
cussion that  follows.  Dickens  did  have  a  dlspo-/^ 
sition  to  make  his  characters  at  all  costs  happy,  ^_ 
or,  to  speak  more  strictly,  he  had  a  disposition  to  •  / 
make  them  comfortable  rather  than  happy.  He 
had  a  sort  of  literary  hospitality;  he  too  often 
treated  his  characters  as  If  they  were  his  guests. 
From  a  host  is  always  expected,  and  always  ought 
to  be  expected  as  long  as  human  civilization  is 
healthy,  a  strictly  physical  benevolence,  If  you  will, 
a  kind  of  coarse  benevolence.  Food  and  fire  and 
such  things  should  always  be  the  symbols  of  the 
man  entertaining  men ;  because  they  are  the  things 
which  all  men  beyond  question  have  in  common. 

267 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

But  something  more  than  this  Is  needed  from  the 
man  who  is  imagining  and  making  men,  the  artist, 
the  man  who  is  not  receiving  men,  but  rather  send- 
ing them  forth. 

As  I  shall  remark  in  a  moment  In  the  matter  of 
the  Dickens  villains,  it  Is  not  true  that  he  made 
every  one  thus  at  home.  But  he  did  do  It  to  a 
certain  wide  class  of  Incongruous  characters;  he 

'^ /did  it  to  all  who  had  been  in  any  way  unfortunate. 

^  It  TTad^Indeed  its  origin  (a  very  beautiful  origin) 
In  his  realization  of  how  much  a  little  pleasure 
was  to  such  people.  He  knew  well  that  the  great- 
n  est  happiness  that  has  been  known  since  Eden  Is 
^Ithe  happiness  of  the  unhappy.  So  far  he  Is  ad- 
mirable. And  as  long  as  he  was  describing  the 
ecstasy  of  the  poor,  the  borderland  between  pain 
and  pleasure,  he  was  at  his  highest.  Nothing  that 
has  ever  been  written  about  human  delights,  no 
Earthly  Paradise,  no  Utopia  has  ever  come  so 
near  the  quick  nerve  of  happiness  as  his  descrip- 
tions of  the  rare  extravagances  of  the  poor;  such 
an  admirable  description,  for  instance,  as  that  of 
Kit  Nubbles  taking  his  family  to  the  theatre.  For 
he  seizes  on  the  real  source  of  the  whole  pleasure; 
a  holy  fear.  Kit  tells  the  waiter  to  bring  the  beer. 
*'  And  the  waiter.  Instead  of  saying,  '  Did  you 
address  that  language  to  me?  '  only  said,  '  Pot  of 

268 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

beer,  sir;  yes,  sir.'  "  That  Internal  and  quivering 
humility  of  Kit  Is  the  only  way  to  enjoy  life  or 
banquets;  and  the  fear  of  the  waiter  Is  the  be- 
ginning of  dining.  People  In  this  mood  "  take 
their  pleasures  sadly";  which  Is  the  only  way  of 
taking  them  at  all. 

So  far  Dickens  Is  supremely  right.  As  long  as 
he  was  dealing  with  such  penury  and  such  festivity 
his  touch  was  almost  invariably  sure.  But  when 
he  came  to  more  difficult  cases,  to  people  who  for 
one  reason  or  another  could  not  be  cured  with 
one  good  dinner,  he  did  develop  this  other  evil, 
this  genuinely  vulgar  optimism  of  which  I  speak. 
And  the  mark  of  it  Is  this :  thathe_gave  the  char-(.3> 
acters  a  comfort  thjtjiad  no  especixil .connection 
with  theniselves;  he  threw  comfort  at  them  like 
alms.    Xh^^^AI^  Ji^ses^tjthe  end^f  his  stories 

in  which  his  kindness_to_Jhis characters  Is  a  jz2.re- 

less  and^jnsolgjat— kindnesis.  He  loses  his  real 
charity  and  adopts  the  charity  of  the  Charity  Or- 
ganization Society;  the  charity  that  Is  not  kind, 
the  charity  that  is  puffed  up,  and  that  does  behave 
Itself  unseemly.  At  the  end  of  some  of  his  stories 
he  deals  out  his  characters  a  kind  of  out-door 
relief. 

I  will  give  two  Instances.     The  whole  meaning 
^Xlljhe  _cha raster  of  Mr.  MIcawber  is  that  a  man 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

can  be  always  almost  rich  by  constantly  expecting 
^Kes^     1  he  lesson  is  a  really  important  one  in 
our  sweeping  modern  sociology.     We  talk  of  the 
man  whose  life  Is  a  failure;  but  Micawber's  life 
never  is  a  failure,  because  it  Is  always  a  crisis. 
We  think  constantly  of  the  man  who  if  he  looked 
back  would  see  that  his  existence  was  unsuccess- 
ful; but  Micawber  never  does  look  back;  he  al- 
ways looks  forward,  because  the  bailiff  is  coming 
to-morrow.    You  cannot  say  he  is  defeated,  for  his 
absurd  battle  never  ends;  he  cannot  despair  of  life, 
for  he  is  so  much  occupied  in  living.    All  this  is 
of  immense  importance  in  the  understanding  of  the 
poor;  it  is  worth  all  the  slum  novelists  that  ever 
insulted  democracy.     But  how  did  it  happen,  how 
could  it  happen,  that  the  man  who  created  this 
I  Micawber  could  pension  him  off  at  the  end  of 
I  the    story    and   make    him    a    successful   colonial 
j  \  mayor  ?    Micawber  never  did  succeed,  never  ought 
V  \  Jto  succeed ;  his  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world.     But 
ithis  is  an  excellent  instance  of  Dickens's  disposi- 
tion to  make  his  characters  grossly  and  incongru- 
ously comfortable.     There  is  another  instance  in 
the  same  book.     Dora,  the  first  wife  of  David 
j/  Copperfield,  is  a  very  genuine  and  amusing  figure; 
j?(  she  has  certainly  far  more  force  of  character  than 
\\  Agnes.     She  represents  the  Infinite  and  divine  ir- 

270  ■ — 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

ratl^onajity  oi  the  Auman  heart.*  What  possessed 
Ijickens  to  make  her  such  a  dehumanized  prig  as 
to  recommend  her  husband  to  marry  another 
woman  ?  One  could  easily  respect  a  husband  who 
after  time  and  development  made  such  a  marriage, 
but  surely  not  a  wife  who  desired  it.  If  Dora  had 
died  hating  Agnes  we  should  know  that  everything 
was  right,  and  that  God  would  reconcile  the  irre- 
concilable. When  Dora  dies  recommending  Agnes 
we  know  that  everything  is  wrong,  at  least  if  hy- 
pocrisy and  artificiality  and  moral  vulgarity  are 
wrong.  There,  again^ Dickens  yields  to_a  mere 
Jesire  to  give  comfort.  He  wishes  to  pile  up 
pillows  round  Dora;  and  he  smothers  her  with 
them,  like  Othello. 

This  Is  the  real  vulgar  optimism  of  Dickens; 
It  does  exist,  and  I  have  deliberately  put  it  first. 
Let  us  admit  that  Dickens^s  mind  was_ far  too  much 
filled  with  pictures  of  satisfaction  and  cosiness  and 
rej)ose.  Let  us  admit  that  he  thought  principally 
of  the  pleasures  of  the  oppressed  classes;  let  us 
admit  that  it  hardly  cost  him  any  artistic  pang  to 
make  out  human  beings  as  much  happier  than  they 
are.  Let  us  admit  all  this,  and  a  curious  fact 
remains. 

For  It  was  this  too  easily  contented  Dickens, 
this  man  with  cushions  at  his  back  and  (it  some- 

'       271 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

times  seems)   cotton  wool  in  his  ears,  it  was  this 
I    happy  dreamer,  this  vulgar  optimist  who  alone  of 
i    modern  writers   did   really  destroy  some   of   the 
;  wrongs  he  hated  and  bring  about  some  of  the 
,  reforms   he   desired.      Dickens   did  help   to  pull 
down  the  debtors'  prisons;  and  if  he  was  too  much 
;  of  an  optimist  he  was  quite  enough  of  a  destroyer. 
Dickens  did  drive  Squeers  out  of  his  Yorkshire 
den;   and  if  Dickens  was  too   contented,   it  was 
more  than  Squeers  was.     Dickens  did  leave  his 
I  mark  on  parochialisnij^on^ nursing,  on  funerals,  on 
'  public_executions^  on  workhouses,  on  the  Court  of 
Chancery.     These  things  were  altered ;  they  are 
different.     It  may  be  that  such  reforms  are  not 
adequate  remedies;  that  is  another  question  alto- 
gether.   The  next  sociologists  may  think  these  old 
Radical  reforms  quite  narrow  or  accidental.     But 
such  as  they  were,  the  old  radicals  got  them  done ; 
and  the  new  sociologists  cannot  get  anything  done 
at  all.     And  in  the  practical  doing  of  them  Dick- 
ens played  a  solid  and  quite  demonstrable  part; 
that  is  the  plain  matter  that  concerns  us  here.     If 
Dickens  was  an  optimist  he  was  an  uncommonly 
active  and  useful  kind  of  optimist.     If  Dickens 
was  a  sentimentalist  he  was  a  very  practical  sen- 
timentalist. 

And  the  reason  of  this  is  one  that  goes  deep 

272 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

into  Dickens's  social  reform,  and  like  every  other 
real  and  desirable  thing,  Involves  a  kind  of  mys- 
tical contradiction.  If  we  are  to  save  the  op- 
pressed, we  must  have  two  apparently  antagonistic 
emotions  In  us  at  the  same  time.  We  must  thlnl^T 
the  oppressed  man  Intensely  miserable,  and,  at  tne  u 
same  time,  Intensely  attractive  and  Important.  We^^ 
must  Insist  with  violence  upon  his  degradation; 
we  must  insist  with  the  same  violence  upon  his 
dignity.  For  If  we  relax  by  one  Inch  the  one  as- 
sertion, men  will  say  he  does  not  need  saving. 
And  if  we  relax  by  one  inch  the  other  assertion, 
men  will  say  he  is  not  worth  saving.  The  op- 
timists will  say  that  reform  Is  needless.  The 
pessimists  will  say  that  reform  Is  hopeless.  We 
must  apply  both  simultaneously  to  the  same  op- 
pressed man;  we  must  say  that  he  is  a  worm  and 
a  god;  and  we  must  thus  lay  ourselves  open  to 
the  accusation  (or  the  compliment)  of  transcen- 
dentalism. This  Is,  Indeed,  the  strongest  argu- 
ment for  the  religious  conception  of  life.  If  the 
dignity  of  man  Is  an  earthly  dignity  we  shall  be 
tempted  to  deny  his  earthly  degradation.  If  It 
is  a  heavenly  dignity  we  can  admit  the  earthly 
degradation  with  all  the  candour  of  Zola.  If  we 
are  Idealists  about  the  other  world  we  can  be  real- 
ists about  this  world.     But  that  Is  not  here  the 

273 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

point.  What  is  quite  evident  Is  that  If  a  logical 
praise  of  the  poor  man  Is  pushed  too  far,  and  If 
a  logical  distress  about  him  Is  pushed  too  far,  either 
will  Involve  wreckage  to  the  central  paradox  of 
reform.  If  the  poor  man  Is  made  too  admirable 
he  ceases  to  be  pitiable;  If  the  poor  man  is  made 
too  pitiable  he  becomes  merely  contemptible. 
There  Is  a  school  of  smug  optimists  who  will  deny 
that  he  Is  a  poor  man.  There  Is  a  school  of  scien- 
tific pessimists  who  will  deny  that  he  Is  a  man. 

Out  of  this  perennial  contradiction  arises  the 
fact  that  there  are  always  two  types  of  the  re- 
former. The  first  we  may  call  for  convenience 
the  pessimistic,  the  second  the  optimistic  reformer. 
One  dwells  upon  the  fact  that  souls  are  being  lost; 
the  other  dwells  upon  the  fact  that  they  are  worth 
saving.  Both,  of  course,  are  (so  far  as  that  is 
concerned)  quite  right,  but  they  naturally  tend  to  a 
difference  of  method,  and  sometimes  to  a  difference 
of  perception.  The  pessimistic  reformer  points  out 
the  good  elements  that  oppression  has  destroyed; 
the  optimistic  reformer,  with  an  even  fiercer  joy, 
points  out  the  good  elements  that  It  has  not  de- 
stroyed. It  Is  the  case  for  the  first  reformer  that 
slavery  has  made  men  slavish.  It  Is  the  case  for 
the  second  reformer  that  slavery  has  not  made 
men  slavish.    The  first  describes  how  bad  men  are 

274 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

under  bad  conditions.     The  second  describes  how 
good  men  are  under  bad  conditions.     Of  the  first 
class  of  writers,  for  instance,  Is  Gorky.     Of  the! 
second  class  of  writers  is  Dickens. 

But  here  we  must  register  a  real  and  somewhat 
startling  fact.  In  the  face  of  all  apparent  probabil- 
ity, It  Is  certainly  true  that  the  optimistic  reformer 
reforms  much  more  completely  than  the  pessimistic 
reformer.  People  produce  violent  changes  by 
being  contented,  by  being  far  too  contented.  The 
man  who  said  that  revolutions  are  not  made  with 
rose-water  was  obviously  Inexperienced  In  practi- 
cal human  affairs.  Men  like  Rousseau  and  Shel- 
ley do  make  revolutions,  and  do  make  them  with 
rose-water;  that  Is,  with  a  too  rosy  and  sentimental 
view  of  human  goodness.  Figures  that  come  be- 
fore and  create  convulsion  and  change  (for  In- 
stance, the  central  figure  of  the  New  Testament) 
always  have  the  air  of  walking  in  an  unnatural 
sweetness  and  calm.  They  give  us  their  peace 
ultimately  In  blood  and  battle  and  division;  not 
as  the  world  giveth  give  they  unto  us. 

Nor  Is  the  real  reason  of  the  triumph  of  the    /l 
too-contented  reformer  particularly  difficult  to  de- 
fine.    He  triumphs  because  he  keeps  alive  In  the 
human  soul  an  Invincible  sense  of  the  thing  being 
wprjth__doIng,  of  the  war  bemg^  worth  winning, 

^75 


kC 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

of  the  people  being  worth  their  deliverance.  I 
remember  that  Mr.  William  Archer,  some  time 
ago,  published  in  his  interesting  series  of  inter- 
views, an  Interview  with  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy. 
That  powerful  writer  was  represented  as  saying, 
in  the  course  of  the  conversation,  that  he  did  not 
wish  at  the  particular  moment  to  define  his  posi- 
tion with  regard  to  the  ultimate  problem  of 
whether  life  Itself  was  worth  living.  There  are, 
he  said,  hundreds  of  remediable  evils  In  this  world. 
When  we  have  remedied  all  these  (such  was  his 
argument),  it  will  be  time  enough  to  ask  whether 
existence  itself  under  Its  best  possible  conditions 
is  valuable  or  desirable.  Here  we  have  presented, 
with  a  considerable  element  of  what  can  only  be 
called  unconscious  humour,  the  plain  reason  of  the 
failure  of  the  pessimist  as  a  reformer.  Mr. 
Hardy  is  Tasking  us, -i=wiit'^t  ^^  to^uy  a  pig 
in  a  poke;  he  is  asking  us  to  buy  a  poke  on  the 
remote  chance  of  there  being  a  pig  in  it.  When 
we  have  for  some  few  frantic  centuries  tortured 
ourselves  to  save  mankind,  it  will  then  be  "  time 
enough  "  to  discuss  whether  they  can  possibly  be 
saved.  When,  in  the  case  of  infant  mortality,  for 
example,  we  have  exhausted  ourselves  with  the 
earth-shaking  efforts  required  to  save  the  life  of 
every  individual  baby.  It  will  then  be  time  enough 

276 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

to  consider  whether  every  individual  baby  would 
not  have  been  happier  dead.  We  are  to  remove 
mountains  and  bring  the  millennium,  because  then 
we  can  have  a  quiet  moment  to  discuss  whether  the 
millennium  is  at  all  desirable.  Here  we  have  the 
low-water  mark  of  the  impotence  of  the  sad  re- 
former. And  here  we  have  the  reason  of  the 
paradoxical  triumph  of  the  happy  one.  His  tri- 
umph is  a  religious  triumph:  it  rests  upon  his  per- 
petual assert  I  mi  jof  the  value  of  the  human  soul 
and  of  humanjdaily  life.  It  rests  upon  his  asser- 
tion that  human  life  Is  enjoyable  because  It  is 
human.  And  he  will  never  admit,  like  so  many 
compassionate  pessimists,  that  human  life  ever 
ceases  to  be  human.  He  does  not  merely  pity  the 
lowness  of  men;  he  feels  an  Insult  to  their  eleva- 
tion. Brute  pity  should  be  given  only  to  the 
brutes.  Cruelty  to  animals  is  cruelty  and  a  vile 
thing;  but  cruelty  to  a  man  Is  not  cruelty,  it  Is 
treason.  Tyranny  over  a  man  Is  not  tyranny.  It 
Is  rebellion,  for  man  is  loyal.  Now,  the  practical 
weakness  of  the  vast  mass  of  modern  pity  for  the 
poor  and  the  oppressed  Is  precisely  that  It  is  merely 
pity;  the  pity  Is  pitiful,  but  not  respectful.  Men 
feel  that  the  cruelty  to  the  poor  Is  a  kind  of 
cruelty  to  animals.  They  never  feel  that  It  is 
Injustice  to  equals ;  nay.  It  is  treachery  to  comrades. 

277 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

This  dark,  scientific  pity,  this  brutal  pity,  has  an 
elemental  sincerity  of  Its  own;  but  It  Is  entirely 
useless  for  all  ends  of  social  reform.  Democracy 
swept  Europe  with  the  sabre  when  it  was  founded 
upon  the  Rights  of  Man.  It  has  done  literally 
nothing  at  all  since  It  has  been  founded  only  upon 
the  wrongs  of  man.  Or,  more  strictly  speaking, 
its  recent  failures  have  been  due  to  Its  not  admitting 
the  existence  of  any  rights  or  wrongs,  or  Indeed 
of  any  humanity.  Evolution  (the  sinister  enemy 
of  revolution)  does  not  especially  deny  the  exist- 
ence of  God;  what  it  does  deny  is  the  existence  of 
man.  And  all  the  despair  about  the  poor,  and  the 
cold  and  repugnant  pity  for  them,  has  been  largely 
due  to  the  vague  sense  that  they  have  literally 
relapsed  into  the  state  of  the  lower  animals. 

A  writer  sufficiently  typical  of  recent  revolu- 
tionism— Gorky — has  called  one  of  his  books  by 
the  eerie  and  effective  title  "  Creatures  that  Once 
were  Men."  That  title  explains  the  whole  failure 
of  the  Russian  revolution.  And  the  reason  why 
the  English  writers,  such  as  Dickens,  did  with  all 
their  limitations  achieve  so  many  of  the  actual 
things  at  which  they  aimed,  was  that  they  could 
not  possibly  have  put  such  a  title  upon  a  human 
book.  Dickens  really  helped  the  unfortunate  in 
the  matters  to  which  he  set  himself.     And  the 

278 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

reason  is  that  across  all  his  books  and  sketches 
about  the  unfortunate  might  be  written  the  com- 
mon title,  "  Creatures  that  Still  are  Men." 

There  does  exist,  then,  this  strange  optimistic 
reformer;  the  man  whose  work  begins  with  ap- 
proval and  yet  ends  with  earthquake.  Jesus  Christ 
was  destined  to  found  a  faith  which  made  the 
rich  poorer  and  the  poor  richer;  but  even  when 
He  was  going  to  enrich  them,  He  began  with  the 
phrase,  "  Blessed  are  the  poor."  The  Gissings 
and  the  Gorkys  say,  as  an  universal  literary  motto, 
^'  Cursed  are  the  poor."  Among  a  million  who 
have  faintly  followed  Christ  in  this  divine  contra- 
il ctiorij^ickens^tands  out  especially.  He  said,  in 
all  his  reforming  utterances,  ^'  Cure  poverty  ";  but 
he  said  in  all  his  actual  descriptions,  "  Blessed  are 
the  poor."  He  described  their  happiness,  and  men 
rushed  to  remove  their  sorrow.  He  described 
them  as  human,  and  men  resented  the  insults  to 
their  humanity.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see  why,  as 
I  said  at  an  earlier  stage  of  this  book,  Dickens's 
denunciations  have  had  so  much  more  practical  an 
effect  than  the  denunciations  of  such  a  man  as 
Gissing.  Both  agreed  that  the  souls  of  the  people 
were  in  a  kind  of  prison.  But  Gissing  said  that 
the  prison  was  full  of  dead  souls.  Dickens  said 
that  the  prison  was  full  of  living  souls.    And  the 

279 


/ 
/ 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

fiery  cavalcade  of  rescuers  felt  that  they  had  not 
come  too  late. 

Of  this  general  fact  about  Dickens's  descrip- 
tions of  poverty  there  will  not,  I  suppose,  be  any 
serious  dispute.  The  dispute  will  only  be  about 
the  truth  of  those  descriptions.  It  Is  clear  that 
whereas  GIssIng  would  say,  "  See  how  their  pov- 
erty depresses  the  Smiths  or  the  Browns,"  Dickens 
says,  "  See  how  little,  after  all,  their  poverty  can 
depress  the  Cratchlts."  No  one  will  deny  that  he 
made  a  special  feature  a  special  study  of  the  suB^ 
ject  of  the  festivity  of  the  poor.  We  will  come 
to  the  discussion  oF  tHe~veracity  of  these  scenes 
in  a  moment.  It  is  here  sufficient  to  register  in 
conclusion  of  our  examination  of  the  reforming 
optimist,  that  Dickens  certainly  was  such  an  op- 
timist, and  that  he  made  it  his  business  to  Insist 
upon  what  happiness  there  is  in  the  lives  of  the 
unhappy.  His  poor  man  Is  always  a  Mark  Tap- 
ley,  a  man  the  optimism  of  whose  spirit  Increases 
if  anything  with  the  pessimism  of  his  experience. 
It  can  also  be  registered  as  a  fact  equally  solid  and 
quite  equally  demonstrable  that  this  optimistic 
Dickens  did  effect  great  reforms. 

The  reforms  in  which  Dickens  was  instrumental 
were,  indeed,  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  sweep- 
ing, social  panaceas,  special  and  limited.    But  per- 

280 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

haps,  for  that  reason  especially,  they  afford  a  com- 
pact  and  concrete  instance   of  the  psychological 
paradox  of  which  we  speak.     Di£kens._did  deh-    | 
nitely  destroy — or  at  the  very  least  help  to  destroy   /^ 
— certain  instltuttons^ni^eldestfoyrd  those  institu-  j 
tions  simply  by  describing  them.     But  the  crux  and     ^ 
peculiarity  of  the  whole  matter  Is  this,  that,  in  a 
sens_ej  It  can  really  be  said  thatjiejiescrlbedjhese 
things  too  optimistically.     In  a  real  sense,  he  de- 
scribed Dotheboys  Hall  as  a  better  place  than  it  is. 
In  a  real  sense,  he  made  out  the  workhouse  as  a 
pleasanter  place  than  It  can  ever  be.    Foil  the  chief 
glory   of   Dickens  Is  that  he  ma,de  these  places 
intS^ing^  and  the  chief  infamy  of  England  is 
thaTlt  has  made  these  places  dull.     Duhiess  was 
the  one  thing  that  Dickens's  genius  could  never 
succeedTn  describing";  his  vitality  was^so  violent 
that  he  couldTliot: "introduce  mto  his"^b1ks"lrtre 
genuine  Impression  even  of  a  moment  of  monotony. 
If  there  Is  anywhere  In  his  novels  an  instant  of 
silence,  we  only  hear  more  clearly  the  hero  whis- 
pering with  the  heroine,  the  villain  sharpening  his 
dagger,  or  the  creaking  of  the  machinery  that  is 
to  give  out  the  god  from  the  machine.     He  could  ^ 
splendidly  describe  gloomy  places,  but  he  could 
not  describe   dreary  places.     He   could   describe 
miserable   marriages,   but   not   monotonous   mar- 

281 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

riages.  It  must  have  been  genuinely  entertaining 
to  be  married  to  Mr.  Quilp.  This  sense  of  a  still 
Incessant  excitement  he  spreads  over  every  inch 
of  his  story,  and  over  every  dark  tract  of  his  land- 
scape. His  Idea  of  a  desolate  place  is  a  place 
where  anything  can  happen ;  he  has  no  Idea  of  that 
desolate  place  where  nothing  can  happen.  This  is 
a  good  thing  for  his  soul,  for  the  place  where 
nothing  can  happen  Is  hell.  But  still,  it  might 
reasonably  be  maintained  by  the  modern  mind  that 
he  Is  hampered  in  describing  human  evil  and  sor- 
''row  by  this  inability  to  imagine  tedium,  this 
dulness  In  the  matter  of  dulness.  For,  after  all, 
It  is  certainly  true  that  the  worst  part  of  the  lot 
of  the  unfortunate  Is  the  fact  that  they  have  long 
spaces  In  which  to  review  the  Irrevocability  of  their 
doom.  It  Is  certainly  true  that  the  worst  days  of 
the  oppressed  man  are  the  nine  days  out  of  ten 
in  which  he  is  not  oppressed.  This  sense  of  sick- 
ness, and  sameness  Dickens  did  certainly  fail  or 
refuse  to  give.  When  we  read  such  a  description 
as  that  excellent  one — In  detail — of  Dotheboys 
Hall,  we  feel  that,  while  everything  else  is  accu- 
rate, the  author  does,  in  the  words  of  the  excellent 
Captain  Nares  In  Stevenson's  "  Wrecker,''  "  draw 
the  dreariness  rather  mild."  The  boys  at  Dothe- 
boys were,  perhaps,  less  bullied,  but  they  were  cer- 

282 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

talnly  more  bored.  For,  Indeed,  how  could  any 
one  be  bored  with  the  society  of  so  sumptuous  a 
creature  as  Mr.  Squeers?  Who  would  not  put  up 
with  a  few  illogical  floggings  in  order  to  enjoy 
the  conversation  of  a  man  who  could  say,  "  She's 
a  rum  'un.  Is  Natur\  .  .  .  Natur'  is  more  easier 
conceived  than  described"?  The  same  principle 
applies  to  the  workhouse  in  "  Oliver  Twist."  We 
feel  vaguely  that  neither  Oliver  nor  any  one  else, 
could  be  entirely  unhappy  In  the  presence  of  the 
purple  personality  of  Mr.  Bumble.  The  one  thing^ 
he  did  not  describe  In  any  of  the^  abuses  he  de- 
nounced was  the  soul-destroylng^  potency  of  rou- 
tineT^He  made  out  the  bad  school,  the  bad  pa- 
rochial system,  the  bad  debtors'  prison  as  very 
much  jollier  and  more  exciting  than  they  may 
really  have  been.  In  a  sense,  then,  he  flattered 
them;  but  he  destroyed  them  with  the  flattery.  By 
making  Mrs.  Gamp  delightful  he  made  her  im- 
possible. JHe  gave  every  one  an  interest  in  Mr. 
Bumble's  existence;  and  by  the  same^  act  gave 
every  one  an  interest  in  his  destruction.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  find  a  stronger  mstance  of  the  utility 
and  energy  of  the  method  which  we  have,  for  the 
sake  of  argument,  called  the  method  of  the  op^tlmls- 
tlc  reformer.  As  long  as  low  Yorkshire  schools 
were  entirely  colourless  and  dreary,  they  continued 

283 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

quietly  tolerated  by  the  public,  and  quietly  Intol- 
erable to  the  victims.  So  long  as  Squeers  was  dull 
as  well  as  cruel  he  was  permitted;  the  moment  he 
became  amusing  as  well  as  cruel  he  was  destroyed. 
As  long  as  Bumble  was  merely  inhuman  he  was 
allowed.  When  he  became  human,  humanity 
wiped  him  out.  For  in  order  to  do  these  great  acts 
of  justice  we  must  always  realize  not  only  the 
humanity  of  the  oppressed,  but  even  the  humanity 
of  the  oppressor.  The  satirist  had,  In  a  sense,  to 
create  the  images  in  the  mind  before,  as  an  Icono- 
clast, he  could  destroy  them.  Dickens  had  to  make 
Squeers  live  before  he  could  make  him  die. 

In  connection  with  the  accusation  of  vulgar 
optimism,  which  I  have  taken  as  a  text  for  this 
chapter,  there  Is  another  somewhat  odd  thing  to 
notice.  Nobody  In  the  world  was  ever  less  opti- 
mistic than  Dickens  In  his  treatment  of  evil  or  the 
evil  man.  When  I  say  optimistic  In  this  matter 
I  mean  optimism,  In  the  modem  sense,  of  an  at- 
tempt to  whitewash  evil.  Nobody  ever  made  less 
attempt  to  whitewash  evil  than  Dickens.    Nobody 

'    black  was  ever  less  white  than  Dickens's  black. 

\  He  painted  his  villains  and  lost  characters  more 
black  than  they  really  are.  He  crowds  his  stories 
with  a  kind  of  villain  rare  In  modern  fiction — the 
villain   really   without   any    *'  redeeming   point." 

284 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

There  Is  no  redeeming  point  In  Squeers,  or  in 
Monck,  or  In  Ralph  NIckleby,  or  in  Bill  Sikes,  or 
in  QuIlp,  or  In  Brass,  or  In  Mr.  Chester,  or  In  Mr. 
Pecksniff,  or  in  Jonas  ChuzzlewIt,  or  in  Carker,  or 
in  Uriah  Heep,  or  In  Blandols,  or  In  a  hundred 
more.  So  far  as  the  Jbalance^f  good  and  evil  In 
human  characters  is  concerned,  Dickens  certainly 
cquld^not  be  called  a  vulgar  optimist.  His  empha- 
sis on  evil  was  melodramatic.  He  might  be  called 
a  vulgar  pessimist. 

Some  will  dismiss  this  lurid  villainy  as  a  detail 
of  his  artificial  romance.  I  am  not  Inclined  to  do 
so.  He  inherited,  undoubtedly,  this  unqualified 
villain  as  he  inherited  so  many  other  things,  from 
the  whole  history  of  European  literature.  Butjie 
breathed  In^  the  blackguard  a  peculiar  and  vigo- 
rous life  of  his  own.  He  did  not  show  any  tendency 
to  modify  his  blackguardism  In  accordance  with  the 
Increasing  considerateness  of  the  age;  he  did  not 
seem  to  wish  to  make  his  villain  less  villainous; 
he  did  not  wish  to  imitate  the  analysis  of  George 
Eliot,  or  the  reverent  scepticism  of  Thackeray. 
And  all  this  works  back,  I  think,  to  a  real  thing  In 
him,  that  he  wished  to  ha^e_?ija. -Obstreperous  and 
incalculable  enemy.  He  wished  to  keep  alive  the 
idea^oif^cqpibat,  which  means,  of  necessity,  a  combat 
against  something  individual  and  ^Hye.    I  do  not 

285  ~~ 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

know  whether,  In  the  kindly  rationalism  of  his 
epoch,  he  kept  any  belief  In  a  personal  devil  in  his 
ii  theology,  but  he  certainly  created  a  personal  devil 
/  H  in  every  one  of  his  books. 

A  good  example  of  my  meaning  can  be  found, 
for  instance.  In  such  a  character  as  QuUp.  Dick- 
ens may,  for  all  I  know,  have  had  originally  some 
idea  of  describing  Quilp  as  the  bitter  and  unhappy 
cripple,  a  deformity  whose  mind  is  stunted  along 
with  his  body.  But  If  he  had  such  an  idea,  he  soon 
abandoned  it.  QuIlp  is  not  In  the  least  unhappy. 
His  whole  picturesqueness  consists  in  the  fact  that 
he  has  a  kind  of  hellish  happiness,  an  atrocious 
hilarity  that  makes  him  go  bounding  about  like  an 
indlarubber  ball.  QuIlp  is  not  in  the  least  bitter; 
he  has  an  unaffected  gaiety,  an  expansiveness,  an 
universality.  He  desires  to  hurt  people  in  the 
same  hearty  way  that  a  good-natured  man  desires 
to  help  them.  He  likes  to  poison  people  with  the 
same  kind  of  clamorous  camaraderie  with  which 
.  an  honest  man  likes  to  stand  them  drink.  Quilp 
is  not  in  the  least  stunted  in  mind;  he  is  not  in 
reality  even  stunted  in  body — his  body,  that  is, 
does  not  in  any  way  fall  short  of  what  he  wants 
it  to  do.  His  smallness  gives  him  rather  the 
promptitude  of  a  bird  or  the  precipitance  of  a 
bullet.     In  a  word,  Quilp  is  precisely  the  devil  of 

286 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

the  Middle  Ages;  he  belongs  to  that  amazingly 
healthy  period  when  even  the  lost  spirits  were 
hilarious. 

This  heartiness  and  vivacity  in  the  villains  of 
Dickens  Is  worthy  of  note  because  it  is  directly 
connected  with  his  own  cheerfulness.  This  is  a 
truth  little  understood  In  our  time,  but  it  is  a  very  ^ 
essential  one.  If  optimism  means  a  general  ap-  l/i 
proval,  it  Is  certainly  true  that  the  more  a  man  - 
b^cojmes  ailjoptlmlst  the  morejie  becomes  a  melan- 
choly man.  If  he  manages  to  praise  everything, 
his  praise  will  develop  an  alarming  resemblance  to 
a  polite  boredom.  He  will  say  that  the  marsh  Is 
as  good  as  the  garden;  he  will  mean  that  the 
garden  is  as  dull  as  the  marsh.  He  may  force 
himself  to  say  that  emptiness  is  good,  but  he  will 
hardly  prevent  himself  from  asking  what  is  the 
good  of  such  good.  This  optimism  does  exist — 
this  optimism  which  is  more  hopeless  than  pessi- 
mism— this  optimism  which  is  the  very  heart  of 
hell.  Against  such  an  aching  vacuum  of  joyless 
approval  fherg_is  only  one  antidote — a  sudden  and 
p\l£nnc]nuR  belief  in  positive  evil.  This  world 
can  be  made  beautiful  again  by  beholding  it  as  a 
battlefield.  When  we  have  defined  and  isolated 
the  evil  thing,  the  colours  come  back  into  every- 
thing else.     When  evil  things  have  become  evil,    I 

287 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

good  things,  In  a  blazing  apocalypse,  become  good. 
There  are  some  men  who  are  dreary  because  they 
do  not  believe  In  God;  but  there  are  many  others 
who  are  dreary  because  they  do  not  believe  In  the 
devil.  The  grass  grows  green  again  when  we 
believe  In  the  devil,  the  roses  grow  red  again  when 
we  believe  In  the  devil. 

No  man  was  more  filled  with  the  sense  of  this 

bellicose  basis  of  all  cheerfulness  than   Dickens. 

He  knew  very  well  the  essential  truth,  that  the 

true  optimist  can  only  continue  an  optimist  so  long 

as  he  Is  discontented.     For  the  full  value  of  this 

life  can  only  be  got  by  fighting;  the  violent  take 

It  by  storm.    And  If  we  have  accepted  everything, 

j^  ,we  have  missed  something — war.     This  life   of 

'"^  ours  is  a  Y£nL£nioyable  fight,  but  a  very  miserable 

^       truce.    And  it  appears  strange  to  me  that  so  few 

critics  of   Dickens  or  of  other  romantic  writers 

have   noticed  this   philosophical   meaning   In   the 

undiluted  villain.     The  villain  is  not  In  the  story 

Itq  be  a  characterj^  he  Is  there  to  be  a  danger — a 

[ceaseless,    ruthless,   and  uncompromising  menace, 

fike  that  of  wild  beasts  ortHe  sea.     For~the  fulT 


satisfaction  of  the  sense  of  combat,  which  every- 
where and  always  involves  a  sense  of  equality,  it 
is  necessary  to  make  the  evil  thing  a  man;  but  It 
Is  not  always  necessary.  It  Is  not  even  always  ar- 

288 


ALLEGED    OPTIMISM    OF    DICKENS 

tistic,  to  make  him  a  mixed  and  probable  man.  In 
any  tale,  the  tone  of  which  is  at  all  symbolic,  he 
may  quite  legitimately  be  made^an  aboriginal  and 
infernal  energy.  He  must  be  a  man  only  in  the 
sense  that  he  must  have  a  wit  and  will  to  be 
matched  with  the  wit  and  will  of  the  man  chiefly 
fighting.  The  evil  may  be  inhuman,  but  it  must 
not  be  impersonal,  which  is  almost  exactly  the 
position  occupied  by  Satan  in  the  theological 
scheme. 

But  when  all  is  said,  as  I  have  remarked  before, 
the  chief  fountain  In  Dickens  of  what  I  have  called 
cheerfulness,  and  some  prefer  to  call  optimism,  is 
something  deeper  than  a  verbal  philosophy.  It  is, 
after  all,  an  incomparable  hunger  and  pleasure 
for  the  vitality  and  the  variety,  for  the  infinite 
eccentricity  ot  existence.  And  this  word  "  eccen- 
tricity "  brings  us,  perhaps,  nearer  to  the  matter 
than  any  other.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  strongest  mark 
of  the  divinity  of  man  that  he  talks  of  this  world 
as  "  a  strange  world,"  though  he  has  seen  no  other. 
We  feel  that  all  there  is  Is  eccentric,  though  we  do 
not  know  what  is  the  centre.  This  sentiment  of 
the  grotesqueness  of  the  universe  ran  through 
Dickens's  brain  and  body  like  the  mad  blood  of 
the  elves.  He  saw  all  his  streets  in  fantastic  per- 
spectives, he  saw  all  his  cockney  villas  as  top  heavy 

289 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

and  wild,  he  saw  every  man's  nose  twice  as  big  as 
it  was,  and  every  man's  eyes  like  saucers.  And 
this  was  the  basis  of  his  gaiety — the  only  real  basis 
of  any  philosophical  gaiety.  This  world  is  not  to 
be  justified  as  it  is  justified  by  the  mechanical  op- 
timists; it  IS  not  to  be  justified  as  the  best  of  all 
possible  worlds.  Its  merit  is  not  that  it  Is  orderly 
and  explicable;  its  merit  is  that  it  Is  wild  and 
\|l  utterly  unexplained.  Its  merit  Is  precisely  that 
^  none  of  us  could  have  conceived  such  a  thing,  that 
we  should  have  rejected  the  bare  Idea  of  It  as 
miracle  and  unreason.  It  is  the  best  of  all  im- 
possible worlds. 


290 


CHAPTER    XII 

A   NOTE   ON   THE   FUTURE   OF   DICKENS 

The  hardest  thing  to  remember  about  our  own 
time,  of  course,  Is  simply  that  It  is  a  time;  we  all 
Instinctively  think  of  It  as  the  Day  of  Judgment. 
But  all  the  things  In  It  which  belong  to  It  merely 
as  this  time  will  probably  be  rapidly  turned  up- 
side down;  all  the  things  that  can  pass  will  pass. 
It  is  not  merely  true  that  all  old  things  are  al- 
ready dead;  It  is  also  true  that  all  new  things  are 
already  dead;  for  the  only  undying  things  are  the 
things  that  are  neither  new  nor  old.  The  more 
you  are  up  with  this  year's  fashion,  the  more  (In 
a  sense)  you  are  already  behind  next  year's.  Con- 
sequently, In  attempting  to  decide  whether  an  au- 
thor will,  as  It  Is  cantly  expressed,  live.  It  Is  neces- 
sary to  have  very  firm  convictions  about  what  part. 
If  any  part,  of  man  Is  unchangeable.  And  It  Is 
very  hard  to  have  this  if  you  have  not  a  religion ; 
or,  at  least,  a  dogmatic  philosophy. 

The  equality  of  men  needs  preaching  quite  as 
much  as  regards  the  ages  as  regards  the  classes 
of  men.     To  feel  infinitely  superior  to  a  man  In 

291 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

the  twelfth  century  is  just  precisely  as  snobbish 
as  to  feel  infinitely  superior  to  a  man  in  the  Old 
Kent  Road.  There  are  differences  between  the 
man  and  us,  there  may  be  superiorities  in  us  over 
the  man ;  but  our  sin  in  both  cases  consists  in  think- 
ing of  the  small  things  wherein  we  differ  when 
we  ought  to  be  confounded  and  intoxicated  by  the 
terrible  and  joyful  matters  in  which  we  are  at 
one.  But  here  again  the  difficulty  always  is  that 
the  things  near  us  seem  larger  than  they  are,  and 
so  seem  to  be  a  permanent  part  of  mankind,  when 
they  may  really  be  only  one  of  its  parting  modes  of 
expression.  Few  people,  for  instance,  realize  that 
a  time  may  easily  come  when  we  shall  see  the 
great  outburst  of  Science  in  the  nineteenth  century 
as  something  quite  as  splendid,  brief,  unique,  and 
ultimately  abandoned,  as  the  outburst  of  Art  at 
the  Renascence.  Few  people  realize  that  the  gen- 
eral habit  of  fiction,  of  telling  tales  in  prose,  may 
fade,  like  the  general  habit  of  the  ballad,  of  telling 
tales  in  verse,  has  for  the  time  faded.  Few  people 
realize  that  reading  and  writing  are  only  arbitrary, 
and  perhaps  temporary  sciences,  like  heraldry. 

The  immortal  mind  will  remain,  and  by  that 
writers  like  Dickens  will  be  securely  judged.  That 
Dickens  will  have  a  high  place  in  permanent  lite- 
rature there  is,  I  imagine,  no  prig  surviving  to 

292 


THE    FUTURE    OF    DICKENS 

deny.  But  though  all  prediction  Is  In  the  dark, 
I  would  devote  this  chapter  to  suggesting  that  his 
place  In  nineteenth  century  England  will  not  only 
be  high,  but  altogether  the  highest.  At  a  certain 
period  of  his  contemporary  fame,  an  average 
Englishman  would  have  said  that  there  were  at 
that  moment  In  England  about  five  or  six  able  and 
equal  novelists.  He  could  have  made  a  list,  Dick- 
ens, Bulwer-Lytton,  Thackeray,  Charlotte  Bronte, 
George  Eliot,  perhaps  more.  Forty  years  or  more 
have  passed  and  some  of  them  have  slipped  to  a 
lower  place.  Some  would  now  say  that  the  high- 
est platform  Is  left  to  Thackeray  and  Dickens; 
some  to  Dickens,  Thackeray,  and  George  Eliot; 
some  to  Dickens,  Thackeray,  and  Charlotte 
Bronte.  I  venture  to  offer  the  proposition  that 
when  more  years  have  passed  and  more  weeding 
has  been  effected,  Dickens  will  dominate  the  whole 
England  of  the  nineteenth  century;  he  will  be  left 
on  that  platform  alone. 

I  know  that  this  Is  an  almost  impertinent  thing 
to  assert,  and  that  its  tendency  Is  to  bring  in  those 
disparaging  discussions  of  other  writers  In  which 
Mr.  Swinburne  brilliantly  embroiled  himself  In 
his  suggestive  study  of  Dickens.  But  my  dis- 
paragement of  the  other  English  novelists  is 
wholly  relative  and  not  In  the  least  positive.    It  is 

293 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

certain  that  men  will  always  return  to  such  a 
writer  as  Thackeray,  with  his  rich  emotional  au- 
tumn, his  feeling  that  life  Is  a  sad  but  sacred 
retrospect,  In  which  at  least  we  should  forget  noth- 
ing. It  Is  not  likely  that  wise  men  will  forget 
him.  So,  for  instance,  wise  and  scholarly  men  do 
from  time  to  time  return  to  the  lyrists  of  the 
French  Renascence,  to  the  delicate  poignancy  of 
Du  Bellay:  so  they  will  go  back  to  Thackeray. 
But  I  mean  that  Dickens  will  bestride  and  domi- 
nate our  time  as  the  vast  figure  of  Rabelais  domi- 
nates Du  Bellay,  dominates  the  Renascence  and 
the  world. 

Yet  we  put  a  negative  reason  first.     The  par- 
ticular things   for  which   Dickens   Is  condemned 
(and  justly  condemned)    by  his  critics,   are  pre- 
cisely those  things  which  have  never  prevented  a 
man  from  being  Immortal.     The  chief  of  them  is 
the  unquestionable  fact  that  he  wrote  an  enormous 
amount  of  bad  work.     This  does  lead  to  a  man 
being  put  below  his  place  In  his  own  time :  It  does 
not  affect  his  permanent  place,  to  all  appearance, 
,  at  all.      Shakespeare,   for  Instance,   and  Words- 
!  worth  wrote  not  only  an  enormous  amount  of  bad 
1  work,  but  an  enormous  amount  of  enormously  bad 
work.     Humanity  edits  such  writers'  works  for 
i  them.     Virgil  was  mistaken  In  cutting  out  his  in- 
1  294 


THE    FUTURE    OF    DICKENS 

ferior  lines;  we  would  have  undertaken  the  job. 
Moreover  in  the  particular  case  of  Dickens  there 
are  special  reasons  for  regarding  his  bad  work 
as  in  some  sense  irrelevant.  So  much  of  It  was 
written,  as  I  have  previously  suggested,  under  a 
kind  of  general  ambition  that  had  nothing  to  do 
with  his  special  genius;  an  ambition  to  be  a  public 
provider  of  everything,  a  warehouse  of  all  human 
emotions.  He  held  a  kind  of  literary  day  of  judg- 
ment. He  distributed  bad  characters  as  punish- 
ments and  good  characters  as  rewards.  My  mean- 
ing can  be  best  conveyed  by  one  instance  out  of 
many.  The  character  of  the  kind  old  Jew  in 
"Our  Mutual  Friend"  (a  needless  and  uncon- 
vincing character)  was  actually  introduced  because 
some  Jewish  correspondent  complains  that  the  bad 
old  Jew  in  "  Oliver  Twist  "  conveyed  the  sugges- 
tion that  all  Jews  were  bad.  The  principle  is  so 
lightheadedly  absurd  that  it  is  hard  to  imagine  any 
literary  man  submitting  to  it  for  an  instant.  If 
ever  he  invented  a  bad  auctioneer  he  must  Imme- 
diately balance  him  with  a  good  auctioneer;  If  he 
should  have  conceived  an  unkind  philanthropist, 
he  must  on  the  spot,  with  whatever  natural  agony 
and  toil,  imagine  a  kind  philanthropist.  The  com- 
plaint Is  frantic;  yet  Dickens,  who  tore  people  In 
pieces  for  much  fairer  complaints,  liked  this  com- 

295 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

plaint  of  his  Jewish  correspondent.  It  pleased 
him  to  be  mistaken  for  a  public  arbiter:  It  pleased 
him  to  be  asked  (In  a  double  sense)  to  judge 
Israel.  All  this  is  so  much  another  thing,  a  non- 
literary  vanity,  that  there  Is  much  less  difficulty 
than  usual  In  separating  It  from  his  serious  genius : 
and  by  his  serious  genius,  I  need  hardly  say,  I 
mean  his  comic  genius^  Such  Irrelevant  ambitions 
as  this  are  easily  passed  over,  like  the  sonnets  of 
great  statesmen.  We  feel  that  such  things  can 
be  set  aside,  as  the  Ignorant  experiments  of  men 
otherwise  great,  like  the  politics  of  Professor  Tyn- 
dall  or  the  philosophy  of  Professor  Haeckel. 
Hence,  I  think,  posterity  will  not  care  that  Dick- 
ens has  done  bad  work,  but  will  know  that  he  has 
done  good. 

Again,  the  other  chief  accusation  against  Dick- 
ens was  that  his  characters  and  their  actions  were 
exaggerated  and  impossible.  But  this  only  meant 
that  they  were  exaggerated  and  Impossible  as 
compared  with  the  modern  world  and  with  cer- 
tain writers  (like  Thackeray  or  Trollope)  who 
were  making  a  very  exact  copy  of  the  manners 
of  the  modern  world.  Some  people,  oddly  enough 
have  suggested  that  Dickens  has  suffered  or  will 
suffer  from  the  change  of  manners.  Surely  this 
is  irrational.     It  Is  not  the  creators  of  the  im- 

296 


THE    FUTURE    OF    DICKENS 

possible  who  will  suffer  from  the  process  of 
time:  Mr.  Bunsby  can  never  be  any  more  Im- 
possible than  he  was  when  Dickens  made  him. 
The  writers  who  will  obviously  suffer  from  time 
will  be  the  careful  and  realistic  writers;  the  writers 
who  have  observed  every  detail  of  the  fashion  of 
this  world  which  passeth  away.  It  is  surely  ob- 
vious that  there  is  nothing  so  fragile  as  a  fact, 
that  a  fact  flies  away  quicker  than  a  fancy.  A 
fancy  will  endure  for  two  thousand  years.  For 
instance,  we  all  have  fancy  for  an  entirely  fear- 
less man,  a  hero:  and  the  Achilles  of  Homer  still 
remains.  But  exactly  the  thing  we  do  not  know 
about  Achilles  Is  how  far  he  was  possible.  The 
realistic  narrators  of  the  time  are  all  forgotten 
(thank  God)  ;  so  we  cannot  tell  whether  Homer 
slightly  exaggerated  or  wildly  exaggerated  or  did 
not  exaggerate  at  all,  the  personal  activity  of  a 
Mycenaean  captain  in  battle:  for  the  fancy  has 
survived  the  facts.  So  the  fancy  of  Podsnap  may 
survive  the  facts  of  English  commerce:  and  no 
one  will  know  whether  Podsnap  was  possible,  but 
only  know  that  he  Is  desirable,  like  Achilles. 

The  positive  argument  for  the  permanence  of 
Dickens  comes  back  to  the  thing  that  can  only  be 
stated  and  cannot  be  discussed:  creation.  He 
made   things   which   nobody   else   could   possibly 

297 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

make.  He  made  Dick  Swiveller  In  a  very  differ- 
ent sense  to  that  In  which  Thackeray  made  Colonel 
Newcome.  Thackeray's  creation  was  observation : 
Dickens's  was  poetry,  and  Is  therefore  permanent. 
But  there  Is  one  other  test  that  can  be  added.  The 
Immortal  writer,  I  conceive,  Is  commonly  he  who 
does  something  universal  In  a  special  manner.  I 
mean  that  he  does  something  Interesting  to  all  men 
in  a  way  in  which  only  one  man  or  one  land  can 
do.  Other  men  In  that  land,  who  do  only  what 
other  men  In  other  lands  are  doing  as  well,  tend 
to  have  a  great  reputation  In  their  day  and  to 
sink  slowly  into  a  second  or  a  third  or  a  fourth 
place.  A  parallel  from  war  will  make  the  point 
clearer.  I  cannot  think  that  any  one  will  doubt 
that,  although  Wellington  and  Nelson  were  al- 
ways bracketed,  Nelson  will  steadily  become  more 
important  and  Wellington  less.  For  the  fame  of 
Wellington  rests  upon  the  fact  that  he  was  a  good 
soldier  in  the  service  of  England,  exactly  as  twenty 
similar  men  were  good  soldiers  in  the  service  of 
Austria  or  Prussia  or  France.  But  Nelson  is  the 
symbol  of  a  special  mode  of  attack,  which  is  at 
once  universal  and  yet  specially  English,  the  sea. 
Now  Dickens  is  at  once  as  universal  as  the  sea 
and  as  English  as  Nelson.  Thackeray  and  George 
Eliot  and  the  other  great  figures  of  that  great 

298 


THE    FUTURE    OF    DICKENS 

England,  were  comparable  to  Wellington  In  this, 
that  the  kind  of  thing  they  were  doing, — realism, 
the  acute  study  of  Intellectual  things,  numerous 
men  In  France,  Germany,  and  Italy  were  doing 
as  well  or  better  than  they.  But  Dickens  was 
really  doing  something  universal,  yet  something 
that  no  one  but  an  Englishman  could  do.  This  is 
attested  by  the  fact  that  he  and  Byron  are  the 
men  who,  like  pinnacles,  strike  the  eye  of  the  con- 
tinent. The  points  would  take  long  to  study:  yet 
they  may  take  only  a  moment  to  Indicate.  No 
one  but  an  Englishman  could  have  filled  his  books 
at  once  with  a^  furious  caricature  and  with  a  posl- 
tiveTy^ furious  kindness.  In  more  central  countries, 
full  of  cruel  memories  of  political  change,  cari- 
cature is  always  Inhumane.  No  one  but  an  Eng- 
lishman could  have  described  the  democracy  as 
consisting  of  free  men,  but  yet  of  funny  men.  In 
other  countries  where  the  democratic  Issue  has 
been  more  bitterly  fought,  it  is  felt  that  unless 
you  describe  a  man  as  dignified  you  are  describing 
him  as  a  slave.  This  is  the  only  final  greatness  of 
a  man;  that  he  does  for  all  the  world  what  all 
the  world  cannot  do  for  itself.  Dickens,  I  believe, 
did  It. 

'  The  hour  of  absinthe  Is  over.  We  shall  not  be 
much  further  troubled  with  the  little  artists  who 

299 


CHARLES     DICKENS 

found  Dickens  too  sane  for  their  sorrows  and  too 
clean  for  their  delights.  But  we  have  a  long  way 
to  travel  before  we  get  back  to  what  Dickens 
meant:  and  the  passage  Is  along  a  rambling  Eng- 
lish road,  a  twisting  road  such  as  Mr.  Pickwick 
travelled.  But  this  at  least  is  part  of  what  he 
meant;  that  comradeship  and  serious  joy  are  not 
Interludes  In  our  travel;  but  that  rather  our  travels 
are  Interludes  in  comradeship  and  joy,  which 
through  God  shall  endure  for  ever.  The  Inn  does 
not  point  to  the  road;  the_  road  points  to  the  inn. 

fiVncI  all  roads  point  at  last  to  an  ultimate  inn, 

I  where  we  shall  meet  Dickens  and  all  his  charac- 
ters :  and  when  we  drink  again  It  shall  be  from 

I  the  great  flagons  in  the  tavern  at  the  end  of  the 

Lsvorld. 


THE   END 


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